You Have to Make Your Own Fun Around Here

by Frances Macken

  I sit down on the bed and observe her preening herself along to the pop songs. She hasn’t much to say, alternately absorbed in her own reflection and rattling through her make-up bag. I’m not as taken with her now as I was before.

  ‘How is it you moved down from Dublin?’

  ‘The brothers were getting in trouble up there. They were on their last warning.’

  ‘What’s it like in Dublin anyway?’

  ‘It’s like a different planet, Katie,’ she says wistfully, and daubing her eyelids with eyeshadow using her index finger. ‘You’d love it, I’d say. It’s all happening up there.’

  At ten to nine, there’s a soft car beep outside on the road. After she’s gone from the room, I look through all the things in the rucksack and the make-up bag. It’s nice to be looking through the things. The disc of pink blusher and palette of eyeshadow. The small tin of lip gloss, nearly new. I wonder did she rob the things or did she have the money for them herself. She has Sun Moon Stars perfume that must belong to Maureen. I spray it on my wrist and take it in. I try on lip gloss and eyeshadow as well but then I think better of it and rub it all off. She could be back any second and I don’t want to be caught and look foolish.

  This is no fun at all. She’s been gone now for hours. I lie awake in the dark, listening to the radio at a low volume. I wouldn’t have minded going for a spin too if she would have asked me. I’m thinking now that she’s only using me for cover. I’d say she might only be passing the time with me until she meets the right people. Mammy taps on the door. ‘Are ye alright?’ she says softly.

  ‘Yes, Mammy.’

  ‘Is Pamela alright?’ Should I say something? Should I be concerned? What if Pamela was to never come back? I want to confide in Mammy but I don’t. It’s Mammy and Maureen engineering things between myself and Pamela, and undermining myself and Evelyn’s friendship.

  ‘She’s asleep,’ I call out, and Mammy pads away from the door and down the hall. I roll over in the bed, fold my arms and sigh out loud.

  It’s very late when the headlight beams sweep through the room. There’s a rustling at the window and Pamela’s leg swings over the sill. I lean out of the bed and turn on the feathered lamp. ‘How’d you get on?’

  ‘Oh my God. Amazing.’ She drops the furry hood down from over her head. Her face is flushed and her copper ponytail has loosened out about her. She has a cool, moist aura from being outside.

  ‘Where’d ye go?’

  ‘We just drove around talking.’

  ‘Tell me who you were with,’ I press her. ‘Go on.’

  ‘I’ll tell you another time,’ she says. A friend who tells you nothing is no friend at all. I’m altogether gone off her. ‘Take a look at this. I got a present off him. He says he’s never before met a girl like me.’ She holds out a navy box and there’s a necklace inside on a bed of velvet padding. The necklace has a ballet slipper pendant on it. ‘I might fall in love with him yet. It’s about time I fell in love with someone. I’m seventeen.’ I’m seventeen myself. Is it time I fell in love too?

  ‘You can’t fall in love over a present. That’s only a cod.’ You wouldn’t mind but the necklace isn’t even expensive-looking. It’s only sterling silver.

  She considers this. ‘It’s not just the present. It’s the way he makes me feel. He knows the dancing is everything to me.’ It’s clear that I don’t feel as strongly about the dancing as Pamela. I don’t think I’m destined for dancing after all. ‘It might be better if I just do the dancing on my own, Katie. He’ll only give me the lift to the competitions and no one else.’

  ‘That’s grand. I don’t mind.’ That’s it so, and just as well.

  She turns her back and hurriedly gets into her pyjamas. ‘Don’t look.’ I can hear her kicking off the high-heeled shoes and unzipping her jeans.

  I knock off the lamp and turn over on my side. Pamela clambers into the bed and tugs the duvet over herself. ‘Katie,’ she whispers after a minute. ‘Could you go out and get me a glass of warmed-up milk.’ I pretend I’m asleep. The potpourri smell is pervading my nose from the bowl on the bedside locker but I don’t budge.

  I’m cycling home from Angelo’s the Friday night following, and I spot Peadar inside in the phone box, and him yakking away.

  ‘I want to work in films.’ I feel a golden thrum in my chest just saying the words aloud.

  ‘Come again?’ says Pearl Powers.

  ‘Films. I’ve decided I want to work in films.’ I haven’t been many places, and my world is small, but I often feel that life is so much like a film. If only I could take the pieces, string them together and make something wonderful out of them. The sun on closed eyelids. The eternal bike rides of summer, a girl’s hair whisking in the wind, and her sitting on a wall and kicking her heels against it.

  Pearl Powers looks at me concernedly in her beige woollen suit and orthopaedic shoes. She has a fuzzy face dusted with compact powder and jowls that judder when she speaks. There’s a powerful scent of talcum and Yardley perfume in her poky office, and a rotten sweet smell wafts from her mouth. ‘It’s very competitive. And I’ve heard it’s not as glamorous as you may have heretofore assumed.’ What about it, I think to myself. Life is competitive. Everything is competitive. Myself and Evelyn will crack it. The two of us together will make the dream a reality. ‘In all my years working in the school, we’ve never had a girl from Saint Dymphna’s wanting to be in films,’ she says, making notes on an index card. I can read the handwriting upside down: Phone parents.

  ‘I don’t want to be in the films. I want to make them,’ I say, pressing the tips of my fingers into the armrests of the chair and looking over at the stacks of pamphlets Pearl Powers keeps bound with elastic bands on her old-fashioned roll-top desk. A Girl’s Guide to Montessori Teaching. Type Your Way to the Top. Career Girls Choose Cosmetology.

  ‘I had you in mind for a secretary.’

  ‘I don’t think I’d like being a secretary. I want to work in films.’ When Daddy is finished with his Sunday newspaper, I go through it and look for the successful people working in the Arts to see how they’ve done it; most of them say it was hard work, and only some of them say it was luck. Daddy says that most of these people start out with money, or with relatives and connections who’ve already forged a path. It’ll be the likes of Evelyn who’ll get lucky, and I’m the kind who’ll have to put in hard work.

  ‘I’m not sure how you would go about it. Getting into films. I suppose you could write a few letters to well-known personalities and see if they write back to you. You might be lucky.’ Pearl Powers smooths her hands over her pleated wool skirt. ‘Out of interest, Katie, what do your parents do?’ She’s scrawling on the index card, her head bent down like an impersonal doctor.

  ‘My father is a maintenance man in Amperloc. My mother is an aide in Saint Fintan’s Psychiatric.’

  Pearl Powers looks disapproving. ‘Isn’t that a pity. You’ll have an uphill battle trying to get a career going in films. A well-to-do family tends to have connections in unusual places, but you won’t have that advantage.’ She thrusts a handful of pamphlets at me. ‘I don’t like to dissuade young ladies from following their desired path, but you might want to have a read of these. In case the films don’t work out.’

  ‘Thank you, Miss Powers.’ I come out of the office and the door clicks shut behind me.

  Evelyn has her shoulder hoicked up against a wall of steel lockers. ‘Give us a look at those. Fuck’s sake. Did she give you any decent advice at all?’

  ‘She said to send letters to well-known personalities.’

  ‘What good would that do. Fucking Pearl.’

  ‘She’s some dose.’

  ‘Never mind her anyways. Leave it with me and I’ll come up with something.’

  It’s later the same day when Evelyn ducks out of her typing class with a freshly typed sheet of paper. ‘Here it is. Here’s what we’ll do,’ she says, waving the paper about. I catch hold of it and read it aloud.
<
br />   Ten-Step Career Plan

  1. Get into college

  2. Finish college

  3. Get any sort of job at all

  4. Save up like mad

  5. Move to London, New York or Los Angeles

  6. Work internships during the day

  7. Get a job in a cool bar at night

  8. Get to know the right people

  9. Everyone falls in luv with our art and ideas

  10. Take the world by storm

  ‘I wish we could go right away. Life is moving at a snail’s pace,’ I say, gazing at the plan, my heart thumping wildly.

  ‘Time moves slower in Glenbruff. It’s a proven fact,’ she says, and then her voice takes on the lilt of suspicion. ‘You won’t change your mind, will you?’

  ‘Of course I won’t. You’d think I didn’t want to go.’

  ‘I’m only making sure. There’s more to life than Glenbruff, you know.’

  ‘The graveyard is full, and there hasn’t been a house built in the place for over a year, and what does that tell you,’ I say, echoing Daddy. I fold up the sheet of paper and put it in my pencil case for safe keeping. I’m all buoyed up by Evelyn’s plan. If it wasn’t for Evelyn, I might have applied for the teaching, like Mammy and Daddy were advising me to, but instead of that, myself and Evelyn are going to unleash ourselves upon the world, and everyone’s going to take notice of the pair of us.

  ‘Come over to the house this evening. I’ve something for you,’ she says, grinning.

  ‘What is it?’

  ‘Come over to the house and find out.’

  There’s a commotion at home before I leave for Evelyn’s house. Daddy and Mammy and Robert are gathered around the kitchen table and scrutinising the college application form I filled out the night before. I have an Arts degree at the top of my list, and Daddy especially is ashen-faced. ‘What’ll you do with a degree like that,’ he says, and it sounds like a rhetorical question.

  ‘I’ll go into the Arts and all that.’

  ‘The Arts are only for rich people,’ Mammy says forlornly. ‘I’ve seen it all before in the theatre business.’ I always feel that things aren’t right for Mammy. It doesn’t suit everyone to be holed up in a small place. She seems happy enough, but that might be a sort of a performance too. I don’t want to end up like Mammy, going through the motions.

  ‘I’ll be alright. I’ll figure it out.’ Myself and Evelyn will crack it. The pair of us together will make the dream a reality.

  ‘It seems that you’ve given little consideration to anything else. People like us have to be sensible,’ Daddy appeals. People like us. He’s always saying that. It makes me feel sad and trapped.

  ‘You’re headed for a rude awakening. I’ll be earning the big money and you’ll be scraping away,’ Robert drawls, sitting into a chair and cocking his feet up on the table. His school shoes skim the clean pages of the form.

  ‘Down. Now,’ Daddy barks and Robert takes down his feet.

  ‘All I’m saying, Katie, is you have to go where the jobs are.’ Robert’s palms are turned out and his black eyes are glinting. ‘There are plenty of shiny jobs that pay fuck all and go nowhere. If there are good jobs going in banking and finance, you go into banking and finance. If there are jobs going in manufacturing, you go into manufacturing. Otherwise you’ll be left behind.’

  ‘Would you listen to his lordship,’ Mammy says irritably.

  ‘Please ye’re selves. If ye don’t want to listen to sense, I can’t make ye,’ he says, before sauntering out of the kitchen and turning up the television in the sitting room.

  ‘Would you not do the teaching,’ Daddy says. ‘You’d have a guaranteed job and a pension. That mightn’t sound like much, but when you’re our age you’ll be glad of it.’ I can’t imagine myself as old as Mammy and Daddy. Pensions. Sure, that’s light years away.

  ‘He’s right,’ says Mammy, and she looks to be troubled, but I’m full to the brim with the belief that myself and Evelyn are going to lead an exhilarating life together, the likes of which you couldn’t begin to imagine. Still, there was something in Mammy’s eyes that caught me in the heart like a hook.

  Evelyn takes me out to the big garage at the side of her house where there’s a skip full of dusty electronics and other odds and ends. Inside the skip I can see the hoop of a wedding dress and an unopened box of paints I once gave her as a present. ‘I found this and thought you might get use out of it,’ she says. It’s an SLR camera in its original box. ‘Have it. It’s only going to the dump if you don’t want it.’

  I touch her sleeve excitedly. ‘Are you sure?’ I’ve never before had a camera of my own.

  ‘Take it. It’s yours.’ Evelyn is the best friend that anyone could hope for. If there was ever a sign that things are going to go well for us, surely this is it. ‘It’s your birthday present, Katie, so don’t be expecting anything else.’ It isn’t my birthday until the summer but what about it.

  ‘I couldn’t sleep last night,’ she says as I sit up on the seat of the bike and place the camera carefully into the basket on the front. ‘I was worrying that I’m going to die before I get to do all the things I want to do.’ Evelyn’s always saying mad and unusual things, and she’s always thinking a step ahead of me. I’ve never even thought about dying before, and how we might not get to do all the things we want to do.

  ‘That’s not going to happen. We’ve loads of time to do it all.’ I push down on the pedals and hit off in the direction of home. ‘I’ll see you in school.’ I’ve every confidence that myself and Evelyn are going to live forever.

  It’s the day before the Christmas holidays from school. Pamela’s at the vending machine sending a pound coin into the slot, and Evelyn makes a bold approach towards her. ‘Pamela,’ she says, her smile effervescent. ‘Everyone’s getting bored of your dancing. No one else would say it to your face, but I offered to do it out of niceness. It’s time to hang up the dancing shoes.’

  A can of Coke thunders into the metal receptacle, and Pamela reaches in her hand and removes it. She turns about to us and snaps back the tab on the can. Ksht. ‘Would you ever fuck off,’ she says.

  ‘Why don’t you fuck off yourself. Why don’t you go back to Dublin and stop annoying us with your stupid-looking hip hop.’

  Pamela smiles and sups off the can. ‘No one likes you, Evelyn. Everyone says you’re a contrary bitch.’ It was Peadar calling Evelyn a contrary bitch the other evening in Angelo’s. He’s been talking it over with Pamela evidently. She looks to me. ‘You must be finished with my tape by now, Katie. You’ve had it for ages. When are you giving it back?’

  ‘It was stolen. Someone took it. I don’t know where it went or who might have it.’ The tape has been languishing at the back of my school locker.

  ‘Stolen.’ She’s eerily casual, supping on her can. ‘You’d better find it.’

  ‘We’ve things for doing and you’re holding us up,’ Evelyn declares. ‘Just stay out of our way. I mean it.’ She barrels along the corridor, and I follow after her. ‘Maeve. Come on, you dickhead. Come on!’

  Myself and Evelyn go into the girls’ bathroom. We mash up the plughole with wads and wads of toilet paper. We toss the dancing tape into the sink and turn on the hot tap. Evelyn pushes down on the soap dispenser and a glop of liquid soap falls into the hot water. The tape floats to the surface and Evelyn pushes it down and suds form around her wrists. She bends the plastic shell in her hands until it snaps. She digs her fingers in and loosens out lashings of shiny black entrails. The entrails are disgorged all over the sink and all over the floor and we wind them around and around the taps on the sink and around the plumbing. It’s Evelyn gives rise to the daringness, who helps me see who I can be. It’s Evelyn gives me power I never thought I had.

  We walk about the school and the town with a buoyancy in our step, and the phrase ‘It’s time to hang up the dancing shoes’ causes us to erupt in fresh laughter, over and over and over again.

  I wonder
if it’s true, that no one really likes Evelyn, and if that’s the case, where does it leave me? I suppose that Pamela is right, and I’d have more friends if I wasn’t friends with Evelyn, but the thing is that you can’t be friends with everyone, and I’m not to feel too badly about it. Even Mammy says, ‘If you’re everyone’s friend, you’re no one’s friend.’

  Maeve is in the sick bed with glandular fever, and so myself and Evelyn hit off to the New Year’s disco by ourselves. We spin around with our arms in the air, dappled by coloured lights, the music sustaining us and leading us about the floor. It feels as though everyone’s watching us admiringly. I end up kissing Dylan Hartigan at midnight, and at long last, Peadar throws the lips on Evelyn. I can sense the swell of pride within her. I can sense that it’s the release of a great tension that had been building. ‘I just hope it doesn’t hurt myself and Peadar’s friendship,’ she says about the kiss. She might only be saying it because Peadar is as likely to forget it happened at all.

  Dylan Hartigan is more than a bit of a let-down. In addition to the modelling, he’s a keen amateur golfer, and he talks at length about the set of custom golf clubs he got for Christmas. I notice he has a tiny golf caddy embroidered on the pocket of his shirt. He doesn’t ask me a single question about myself, but sure, what have I to tell him in any case. All that being said, there’s many a girl who’d love to be in my shoes and kissing Dylan Hartigan on New Year’s Eve. It’s some achievement for a first kiss.

  Myself and Evelyn dissect the events of the New Year’s disco. Evelyn reminisces about her slow dance to ‘Runaway’ by The Corrs with Peadar, when he slid his hands all over her bottom on the outside of her jeans. All the while, Maeve sits slumped on the bed, or paints her stubby nails silently, or rummages through the clothes in Evelyn’s wardrobe. ‘Who else was there? Did Aidan go?’