‘I’m sorry I’m late. I fell asleep on the bus. It’ll never happen again.’
‘We wanted to talk with you,’ Mervin says in a serious tone. ‘Edwina tells me you’re struggling.’
I’m caught on the hop. Caught for words. ‘I wouldn’t say I’m s-struggling. I’ve been getting used to everything. There’s a lot to it. There’s a lot to do.’
‘You missed an important conference call with Anika and Rohan this morning,’ says Edwina, and the turban slips down her forehead.
‘When a person complains about having a lot to do, it sends up a red flag. It tells me the person doesn’t manage their time. It tells me they’re not working smart.’ Mervin gives an insincere smile. ‘If you’ll indulge me for a moment. I have a little story I like to share in these situations. Back when I started out in the industry, I got a call from an old friend. Pete. Pete was heading up an airline. HighTail Airlines. They’ve since gone out of business.’
‘Pete died.’
‘He…yes,’ blusters Mervin. ‘Pete died. The point I’m trying to make is that sometimes things don’t work out and you look back and it’s really a blessing in disguise.’
‘It’s fine,’ I mumble, rising from the chair. I know what’s coming next, but I don’t care any more. My heart hasn’t been in it. I was only fooling myself. It was worlds away from the dream.
I return to my desk and take up my handbag and coat, still warm. ‘You’re off,’ Neil says, weaving a scalp massager with prongs over his head.
‘I am. I’m off.’
‘It’s a pity. You only had a month left on the probation. You almost managed it.’
‘I’ll see you, Neil. Good luck.’
I walk out onto the clamorous street. It’s all over. All of it. There’s a strange relief to be had in failure. I shakily purchase a box of cigarettes and a lighter from a newsagent’s and sit down on a concrete bench. I wonder what’ll I do now. Where’ll I go every day. I don’t know who to phone, so I phone Nuala. ‘I was let go,’ I tell her.
‘How did you manage that?’ she says, gasping. ‘Where are you? I’ll come and meet you.’
I stay put on the bench and light up a cigarette. I put it in between my lips and it falls out. It isn’t long before I spot Nuala zig-zagging through the crowd in a navy business suit, looking concerned, her curls whirling in the wind. ‘You’ll get something else,’ she says. ‘Plenty of people get let go.’
‘Mm.’
‘Tell you what you’ll do when you get home. Why don’t you have a nice hot bubble bath, get into your pyjamas, and later on yourself and myself can watch something silly.’
‘Mm.’
‘Did you know when I was seventeen I lost my summer job in a nursing home. I tripped over a commode and it fell over and ruined a carpet.’
‘Jesus.’
Nuala says she’ll ask her father if I can stay on in the apartment for a month or two without paying any rent while I’m waiting to get a new job. I tell her I wouldn’t feel right about it, but thanks all the same. I don’t want to be beholden to anyone. I don’t want the tension skyrocketing with Norma. ‘I’ll get you another job,’ she says. ‘Don’t worry about a thing. It’ll all be sorted yet.’
‘What kind of a job?’
She scrunches up her face. ‘Would you be open to doing door-to-door sales?’
‘I thought you were doing media recruitment.’
‘They took it off me. I was better at the door-to-door sales.’
I’ve another idea altogether, and I’ve made up my mind about it. I’m going back to Glenbruff. Maybe a person shouldn’t venture too far away from where they’re from. Maybe it only leads to a sense of fragmentation, as though you’ve left half of yourself behind.
Norma takes delight in warning people. She warns that it’ll be hard to return to Dublin if I leave it too long. ‘I’m only telling you for your own good.’ She knows someone who went to Australia for six months, and when the person returned, they didn’t know if they were coming or going.
‘Glenbruff is hardly comparable to Australia,’ I say. In any case, I can’t see myself coming back up to Dublin. It’s run its course.
‘We’ll miss you,’ says Nuala in a sad voice. She’s standing at the door of the box room, looking in at me with her hands on her hips. ‘It’ll be strange having another girl in your place. I’ve several girls interested in the room already.’ I hadn’t thought about someone else staying in the box room. Someone else on the couch and going on the nights out. ‘Promise us you’ll come and visit.’
‘Of course I’ll visit.’ I’m surprised to feel a bit sad leaving Nuala.
‘Would you not just fly off somewhere and see how it goes? London or Sydney or anywhere at all,’ she says, looking all forlorn.
‘I can’t afford it, Nuala. I’ve no money,’ I say, heaving open the zip around a suitcase.
‘I’ll give you money.’
I smile and shake my head. ‘No. Don’t be daft.’
I spend all day Saturday crushing my clothes and shoes into two suitcases. I give Nuala and Norma my toiletries as I don’t want them leaking into the clothes. I haven’t much left after that, except for the camera, still in perfect working order. I wrap it up in bubble wrap and tuck it between the layers.
At five o’clock, a text lands into my phone: Hey. It’s Luc. Marco borrowed my leather jacket and took it to France. He came back last night and I found your number. Are you free later? Bisous.
It’s now or never, I’m thinking.
Sometimes you walk into a place and you know you’re going to have a good time. You know you’re about to act out, like something’s been brewing inside of you and you’re about to go off like a rocket. This is the only night that ever mattered, and you belong to this night, and you’re going to give it everything you’ve got. This is a night that will change you forever.
People are watching myself and Luc and wishing they were having half as much fun. We’ve been dancing for two hours straight at Electric Jake’s Basement. Thrashing, flailing and raising dust. Luc’s shouting in my ear. He says he’s going to Rio, and he’s going to hit up all the big music festivals. ‘It’s like one day I’m gonna die and I wanna feel like I really lived while I had the chance.’ His papa is very strict, and keeps threatening to cut him off financially, but he gave Luc the money after he promised to go to law school on his return. I tell Luc the advertising job hasn’t worked out, and I’m leaving Dublin, and I doubt I’ll be coming back. ‘I don’t know why you took the job. You want to work in films. You’ve got to make it happen,’ he shouts.
‘What about you? You’re going to law school. It doesn’t seem right.’ I put my head on his warm chest and wrap my arms around him.
‘Come to Rio with me. Leave it all behind.’
‘I can’t. There’s stuff I have to get back to. People I have to see.’
‘What stuff? What people? Come to Rio and forget about it. Every night could be like this.’
I raise my head. ‘Let’s go back to the apartment.’
‘I’m not doing that.’ He laughs. ‘Are you kidding?’
‘Why not.’
‘You know why not. You’re crazy.’
Myself and Luc bundle into a taxi at three in the morning, wielding kebabs. ‘I don’t know if this is a good idea,’ he says, smiling and wincing all at once.
‘I’ve had kebabs from that place before. They were grand.’
‘No. Not the kebabs. What if we get caught?’ The taxi driver looks up into his rear-view mirror.
‘We won’t get caught.’ I don’t feel in the least bit apprehensive. Nuala’s got nothing to do with what’s happening between myself and Luc. The likes of Nuala doesn’t end up with the likes of Luc, and if she was ever to find out about it, she’s the kind of person who’d forgive a thing like that. She’s soft. ‘We’ll get up early. Before anyone’s awake.’ It’s a fine idea.
‘This is fucked up. I thought you and Nuala were sort of alike. Bu
t you know what, you’re pretty dark actually.’
I wake up cold. Luc’s taken up all of the duvet. I tiptoe out of the bedroom to fill a glass of water, and Nuala’s sitting at the kitchen table wearing the pilled dressing gown with a plate of scrambled eggs before her. I freeze. ‘Did you bring someone home?’ she says teasingly. ‘Aren’t you the bold girl.’
Suddenly, Norma’s screaming blue murder out in the hallway. Nuala grabs a hold of her butter knife, jumps up and runs out to her. I look through the open doorway to see Luc standing there, dishevelled, and with his hand on the latch of the front door. He’s wide-eyed, tousle-haired and poised to sneak out. Nuala hurls the butter knife at him, misses, and it bounces off the back of the door. Luc leaps, yelping, and yanks the door shut behind him.
Nuala and Norma turn about to me, agog. ‘How c-could you?’ stammers Nuala. ‘We thought you were nice.’ I suppose she thought we were better friends than that.
‘Get your shit and get out of here,’ rails Norma. ‘You’re a disgrace. And don’t ever come near us again.’ It’s a good thing I’m already packed.
I breathe a long sigh of relief as the train pulls out of Heuston Station. It’s late in the afternoon, the carriage is warm, and amber sunbeams pour in on top of me. ‘I’m only home to explore my options,’ I imagine myself saying to people in Glenbruff. ‘I don’t know yet what my plans are, but sure that’s part of the fun of it.’ Will I call up to Evelyn’s house, or pick up the phone, or what’ll I do? Would it be mad if I wrote her a letter? Will I be downplaying the job in the agency, or talking myself up? It’ll all depend.
On the approach to Glenbruff, I gather up my things, sling a backpack over my shoulders and make my way down the aisle of the train. I’ve two big suitcases to haul out of the luggage hold. Dylan Hartigan spots me huffing with the cases and helps me place them down on the station platform. He flashes the catalogue smile, but there’s nothing but deadness behind the eyes.
‘Hello, Dylan.’
‘Hello, stranger.’
‘How’s the golf?’
‘Never better. I’m after turning semi-pro.’ It’s only later I recall that he never used my name, and likely hasn’t remembered me at all.
3
Glenbruff
Daddy collects me from the train station. ‘I thought you were permanent in that place,’ he says gruffly, and only barely looking at me. Daddy’s had an aversion to unemployment since the quarry closed up in the eighties and he lost his job. There were no jobs again until Amperloc opened several years after.
‘I was on a short contract.’ It’s not right to lie about the job, but telling the truth would create too much alarm and fuss.
‘Have you some sort of a plan?’ he says. Can a person not have a minute to themselves without being asked what they’re going to do next! Can a person not enjoy the present moment.
‘Of course I’ve a plan, Daddy,’ I tell him, but the truth is that I’ve no plan in mind, only to sink into old ways of being.
As soon as I’m landed in the door, I go down to my bedroom and put on old clothes: tracksuit bottoms with the knees standing out in them, a hoodie with a comforting scent that’s seen the inside of a drier one too many times, and well-worn running shoes. I rifle through the drawers and come across mixtapes I haven’t listened to in years, and I throw them in the tape deck of the dusty stereo. I dance around in the gap between the bed and the wardrobe, and I unzip a suitcase and take out a few things to fulfil the homecoming. Books. Slippers. The pyjamas still stained with Nuala’s mascara tears. It’s then I notice something awry. There’s an indentation in the clothes where the camera is supposed to be. Someone must have gone into the luggage hold on the train and whipped it out. I’m rigid with disbelief. What can it mean, the camera gone? What can it mean, the camera being taken? It feels like a cosmic incident, a sort of portent contrived by unknown entities.
Daddy’s voice is raised above in the kitchen, and Robert’s too. Daddy’s asking what exactly is the nature of Robert’s friendship with Desmond Duignan. ‘Has that man no friends his own age?’ Robert has maintained a good relationship with Desmond Duignan over the years. He’s on first-name terms with him, and calls him Des. Robert looks up to Des as a sort of role model, with the effect of distancing himself from Mammy and Daddy. Robert and Des go for pints together in Donovan’s and they go off fishing in the River Suck for the full day.
I creep up along the corridor, up close to the kitchen door, and have a listen in. ‘Myself and Des find one another interesting. He’s a highly intelligent person. He has life experience. He’s been kidnapped by the FARC, and been involved in secret talks in all sorts of war-torn countries.’
‘Bunk,’ Daddy says. ‘That man wants the adoration of young people. He’ll tell you anything you want to hear. He’s too fond of you, and no wife or a hint of a woman about him.’
‘Jesus, Dad. Did it ever cross your mind that we might have an intellectual connection? A shared philosophy, like.’
‘You should be going around with people your own age.’
‘I’ve no interest in going around with people my own age. I’ve nothing in common with people my own age. Lookit. Myself and Des have plans. He’s going to help me with my career. He has a network in the States.’ Robert’s completed his engineering degree but he’s had difficulty securing a job as a bridge engineer. Mammy tells me he’s been sleepwalking and losing weight, and he’s even broken his accordion in a rage. She says Daddy hauled him out of the house by his collar and roared at him to pull himself together.
‘Think very carefully about that man’s motives. Don’t let the career dream blind you.’ Daddy’s talking to the wall, but still and all, it is a bit unorthodox, Robert going around the place with his old teacher. You’d have to wonder if there’s more to it. Even Mammy’s saying that man is only a fraud and a fantasist. Why did he go around driving cheap cars if he had all his money made on the stock market?
The handball alley is more than two hundred years old. It’s made up of three walls: a high back wall and two wings either side that taper to the ground. There are big boughs of horse chestnut trees hanging over the wings. I go around the sides of the handball alley, picking clumps of velvet moss out of the crevices and smelling them.
Robert’s belting a tennis ball against the high wall and catching it. The handball alley resounds with echoes of the tennis ball clapping off the wall, and the clap of it landing back in his hand. Poc!
After a bit, he relaxes in himself. The hunched shoulders broaden out, and his face softens. He stifles a laugh. ‘I’ve a story for you. I don’t know what you’ll make of it.’ Robert tells me he took Maeve Lynch over to the cinema in Adragule to see The Notebook. He says he collected her up at the house, and she was dolled up to the nines, and as soon as she sat into the car, he knew he’d made a mistake. There was something about her that made him tense up. He says his mind was screaming. He says she was laughing at the wrong times during the film, and crying at the wrong times, and when the lights came up afterwards, there was blood all around Maeve’s mouth and on her chin and spattered on her top. She was after getting her lip caught in her braces, but she was oblivious to it. Robert was disgusted. He took a tissue out of his pocket and handed it to her, and she spat on the tissue and tried to wipe all the blood off herself. She was shaking and bawling, and he’d to take her straight home, and the lip was bleeding all the way there. He says he’s been avoiding her ever since. ‘That’s the women of Glenbruff for you. Awkward as fuck.’ He resumes the belting of the ball, and after a time he says, ‘Aidan was in Glenbruff this morning. I mentioned you were home. He was wondering if you’ll be going to the bonfire.’
Oh. It must be five years since I laid eyes on Aidan Morley. The Stephen’s Night party when he made a holy show of himself. ‘What bonfire is that?’
‘Summer solstice bonfire. Kenneth’s organising it. It’ll probably be shite.’
‘I wonder will Evelyn be going,’ I muse alou
d, and I’ve a shudder down my spine that I can’t discern as being either fear or excitement. It could well be a mix of the two.
Kenneth is going around with a bucket collecting the entry fee. It’s five euros to stand in the field with the bonfire. ‘What are we getting for our money, Kenneth?’ people are asking.
‘A free bonfire,’ he says.
There’s a yellow cast to the sky, and the atmosphere rumbles with indecipherable sounds. Small children roll down the gentle slope of field, and there are dogs racing around at high speed, chasing hares, yapping and yowling. The locals stand in clusters, talking about the stretch in the evening. It’s half past nine and you could thread the eye of a needle in the twilight. Kenneth is tending to the bonfire now, lobbing firewood at it haphazardly and broken bits of pallets. Sparks leap from the flames and fritter away into the sky. There’s something alive in the bonfire; if I look at it with one eye closed, I can see fiery demons whirling around inside it.
Evelyn steps between myself and the fire, appearing in silhouette. ‘Would you look who it is.’ She’s standing with her feet planted out, clad in Doc Marten boots reaching midway up her calves, and her fists are jammed in the pockets of her denim jacket.
‘Hi.’ I’m prickling with electricity, like there’s a network of bare wires under my skin instead of veins and arteries.
‘What are you doing down here?’ she snaps, looking cross, her pout crinkling with displeasure.
‘I was laid off.’ It’s what I’ve decided to tell people. It’s the handiest way out of it. I don’t want a ‘Poor Katie’ story doing the rounds. Katie couldn’t hold on to the job. Katie wasn’t able for it. Katie wasn’t cut out for it and had to come home.
You Have to Make Your Own Fun Around Here Page 15