You Have to Make Your Own Fun Around Here

by Frances Macken

  ‘Laid off from what?’

  ‘I was working in an advertising agency. I was coming up with ideas for advertising campaigns and liaising with clients and making the plans to implement…the plans.’ I can feel my throat beginning to close over.

  ‘Liaiiiising,’ she says, drawing out the word before making a snorting noise in the space behind her nose.

  ‘We did a campaign for a fortified porridge. We had a woman parasailing off the top of an office block. We did buses and billboards. You might have seen it.’ This is only a warm-up, I’m telling myself. It takes time to reignite a friendship. It’s not something that’ll happen overnight. You have to invest in it: time, energy and fawning.

  ‘I’m not sure if you’ve noticed but we don’t have buses or billboards in Glenbruff.’ She flicks her long hair over her shoulder. ‘What happened anyway?’

  ‘I was laid off,’ I repeat. ‘They might have extended the contract only we lost one of our big accounts. It’s a common enough thing to happen in the industry. It’s all swings and roundabouts.’

  Evelyn looks at me with great intensity, and then she says, ‘I just have a problem with advertising on, like, a fundamental level. It’s like all you’re doing is hijacking people’s brains. It’s not a noble creative pursuit. Not like film or drawing or other kinds of art.’ I had thought she would think it was cool. I had thought she would think it was daring. I thought she’d be impressed, or envious even.

  ‘I don’t know. I think advertising is important. And it’s a career.’

  ‘Do you not think the concept of having a career is dangerous. People getting caught up with having to have a career and they end up limiting themselves, and limiting their potential to try other things. It’s actually sad how many people feel the need to have a career,’ she says, pulling her hand out of her denim pocket and making quotation marks with her fingers. It occurs to me that it wouldn’t matter what I’d been doing in Dublin but she’d find a way to denounce it or demean it.

  ‘I don’t know.’ I shrug my shoulders. ‘Maybe. Probably. What about you. Are you still doing the art?’

  Peadar’s approaching us now, swaggering across the grass in a Radiohead T-shirt. He has a cigarette propped over his left ear and his fringe is falling in his eyes.

  ‘Peadar. Are you well?’

  ‘Oh, I’m in great form,’ he says confidently, dropping a tanned arm over Evelyn’s shoulder. The arm has a streak of motor oil on it. ‘I’ve everything figured out. The meaning of life.’

  ‘I’m just telling Katie that I’m giving up on the art. There’s no point making art if no one ever sees it.’

  ‘Here we go,’ he gripes, making a fed-up face. ‘What about doing it for yourself and not other people?’

  ‘People make art because they want the attention. They’re always thinking about who’s going to see it. What you’re saying is a cop-out.’ She pushes his dirty arm off her shoulder.

  ‘What about Van Gogh,’ argues Peadar. ‘Painted over nine hundred paintings and sold only the one while he was alive, but Vincent just carried on with it. The painting was a bodily function, like shitting and eating. That’s real artistry. Not caring who’s looking but doing it for the sake of it.’

  ‘All that talent and nobody acknowledged him his entire life,’ she says, raising her voice. ‘He just wandered around in fields and on the road, thinking he didn’t matter. Thinking he’s a nobody. Then as soon as he’s dead, some Japanese wanker buys one of his paintings for millions. I’ll tell ye now, I’m not taking that chance.’

  She’s right, I suppose. It hurts to live your life like that. But imagine thinking so highly of yourself that you’d equate yourself to Van Gogh, one of the most important painters who’s ever lived. Is she for real?

  ‘You know,’ she goes on, ‘the only way to become really successful in music or acting or anything at all is to die. At least then you’ve a bit of mystery to you and people are left wanting more.’

  ‘You give up too easily,’ Peadar says, and Evelyn takes to sulking, and it gets me thinking that she’s all talk and no show and always has been.

  Peadar says he was up in Dublin for a while and he didn’t like it and came home again. ‘I couldn’t settle. I don’t know what it was. It’s not for everyone. I wouldn’t be mad gone on city livin’.’ He got back into the trucking on his return to Glenbruff and he’s on the road two weeks out of four. When he’s not on the road he does a bit of singing in Donovan’s Bar. He asks me to call in on Friday night as he’s keen to sing to a decent-sized crowd, and I say I’d only be delighted. It’s nice being asked places now that I’m home.

  Kenneth beckons Peadar over to him. He wants to roll an old tractor tyre into the bonfire but hasn’t the strength on his own. ‘Yourself and Peadar are still together,’ I say to Evelyn as we’re observing Peadar straining at the side of the tyre.

  ‘Yeah,’ she says. ‘We’re not a couple though. Like, we’re not exclusive or anything. It’s like an open relationship but there’s no one else involved.’ She turns to me, tilts her heart-shaped face and narrows her hazel eyes. ‘How come we haven’t heard from you in so long?’

  ‘Oh. You know yourself. I just got caught up with work and the social side of things. It’s hectic up in Dublin.’

  The hazel eyes bore into me. ‘You were gone so long we nearly forgot about you,’ she says, and my heart begins hammering. ‘You can’t just come back here and try to be one of us again. It doesn’t work that way. You didn’t even come out to see us at Christmas time. We thought you didn’t give a damn about us.’

  I cough nervously, my airways clenching. ‘I’ve always felt that we’ve one of those kinds of friendships that no matter how long it’s been we can still get together and it’s like we only saw one another yesterday.’ The sentiment comes out all daft and hokey, and I’m hit with a wave of searing embarrassment.

  ‘You were needed down here,’ she says, and there’s the catch of hurt in her voice. There’s great reassurance in the catch of hurt.

  ‘How d’you mean?’

  ‘Don’t give me that. You must have heard the stories.’

  ‘I never heard any stories. I’m out of the loop. Honest to God.’

  ‘Dad hired Stacey Nugent for his office. He left us and went off with her. They’re living in an apartment over in Adragule. Over the medical centre.’

  ‘I can’t believe it.’ Stacey Nugent is the same age as myself and Evelyn. She must be twenty years younger than Dan Cassidy. He’s some rotter, but haven’t I always known it.

  ‘I thought it was Peadar she was after when she came working for us. I suppose I was wrong.’ She sets her jaw. ‘Anyway. I made the most of it. Dad gave me a blank cheque and I bought heaps of new equipment.’ What sort of equipment, I’m wondering, but now isn’t the time for asking.

  ‘I’m awful sorry, Evelyn. I was trying to make a go of it up there. I’m sorry.’ I hope she’ll accept the apology now we’ve addressed the resentment. ‘It’s good to have the chat with you and sort things out. Wipe the slate.’ The words stay floating between us, throb excruciatingly. ‘Where’s Maeve? Is she around here someplace? Will she be coming down?’

  ‘She’s on holidays with Amanda. They’re over in Tenerife. If we’ve any luck they won’t come back.’

  For all of Aidan’s enquiring about me, there isn’t sight nor sound of him all evening. Feck him anyway. What about him. Myself and Evelyn sit in the grass facing the unwieldy bonfire, the sparks whisking around it, and we’ve no inclination to say very much at all. We’ve the sort of friendship where you don’t need to be always engaged in talk. We can sit together companionably, lifted through the other’s presence.

  ‘That’s some stretch in the evening,’ I say after an unknowable amount of time. I can almost see molecules in the air with the naked eye. The components of memory.

  ‘Ehhh, it’s the summer solstice,’ she jeers. ‘And I thought you were college educated.’

  I can’t think
of one good reason not to resume the friendship. Life’s like a film with Evelyn in it.

  ‘Evelyn said you were coming. I thought she was pulling my leg,’ Maeve says gaily. She’s dressed all in white: linen trousers, a crochet top, a necklace made out of seashells and bleached pieces of coral. ‘How long are you staying around for, Katie?’

  ‘I’m not sure yet. Just the summer, I’d say.’ A summer in Glenbruff is a shapeless, endless thing. You’d forget what day of the week it is. ‘How’d you get on in Tenerife?’ Maeve went with Amanda and John to Tenerife. It was her first ever holiday abroad. She purchased lots of gaudy accessories on the trip, and has a blue fabric starfish fixed to the side of her head. It’s a bit much. It’s daft-looking.

  ‘Oh, it was pure luxury. The whole thing,’ Maeve coos. ‘We’d the whole place to ourselves. A five-bedroom villa. Amanda said we could use it anytime we want. And the beach is only a five-minute walk.’

  Evelyn arrives in wearing her old velvet choker and the black dress with spaghetti straps. ‘Move your big hole, Maeve. Shove up there and make room.’ She forces her way in alongside us in the nook and the handbags are toppling to the ground. Maeve’s caught now with an armrest in the ribs. ‘Take that poxy yoke off your head.’ Maeve fumbles with the blue starfish and removes it with a jerk, tearing strands of hair from her scalp. ‘Well. Tell us. How’s your fancy mammy? How’d you get on?’

  Maeve smiles serenely. ‘We got along perfectly. I am so like her in so many ways. We’ve the same taste in clothes and food. Wine as well. It’s mad, girls.’ She’s still walking on air after the holiday, and the words are babbling out of her. ‘It was roasting hot from dawn to dusk. We had cocktails every day. We had cocktails with our breakfast. Tenerife is like paradise on earth. And the beach was nearly a mile long. If you’d have seen it.’

  ‘Jesus, Maeve. It’s only Tenerife. I’ve been there a million times and so has everyone else,’ says Evelyn. I’ve never been to Tenerife but I don’t say it.

  Maeve’s euphoria fades. She places a glass of fizzy orange and vodka to her lips and gulps down two or three mouthfuls, and then she says, ‘Amanda’s coming down to Glenbruff to see me. Herself and John. They’re coming next week. They’ll be meeting Mary and Tom.’ Evelyn scowls, and Maeve says, ‘I’m not going over it again. That was years and years ago. People make mistakes. Anyway,’ she continues, ‘let ye be the first to know. I’m changing my name to Roxanne.’

  ‘Roxanne,’ Evelyn snorts. ‘Are you fucking joking me? Are you having me on?’

  ‘Roxanne Dowling is the name I was given when I was born. It’s my actual name,’ Maeve says defiantly.

  ‘Don’t fucking change it. Roxanne is a prostitute’s name.’

  ‘It’s only a song about one,’ I pipe up, attempting to keep the chat on an even keel, and Evelyn rolls her eyes.

  ‘I’ll do what I want.’ I suppose Maeve doesn’t want to be Maeve Lynch any more, and that’s understandable.

  Peadar lands into the bar wearing a sheepskin coat, leather waistcoat and thin fabric tie. Everyone’s taking notice of him. He has that kind of way about him, that kind of look about him. He’d catch anyone’s eye. He strolls over to the corner and sits up on a high stool. He adjusts the mic stand, and takes a minute or so to tune his guitar, and then he moves his mouth in close to the mic. ‘One-tchew-one-tchew.’ The conversation in the bar quietens. All eyes are on Peadar, transfixed by the handsome face chiaroscuro under soft spotlights, the tragic cheekbones emphasised. A textured, sensual voice flows out of him. He sings ‘People Are Strange’ like he’s channelling a ghost, and the tantalising sound rolls over us all.

  ‘Myself and Peadar are very close,’ Evelyn whispers, as though she’s in a sort of reverie through looking at him and listening to him. ‘We’re kindred spirits.’ Perhaps it’s the drink talking and the resulting rise in sentimentality, but not long after, she says the same kind of thing about Maeve while Maeve is away powdering her nose. ‘Myself and Maeve are very close. She’s been through an awful lot.’ Evelyn’s remarks are interesting, I think. They indicate a sense of ownership over people. The marking of territory. I imagine her saying the same kind of thing about me. Myself and Katie are very close. We’re practically sisters. I have a swell of pleasure at the thought of it.

  She wants to go out for a cigarette and Maeve has to mind the seats. We head out the back door and sit ourselves down at a weatherworn picnic table with a big, dirty umbrella above it. The wood of the picnic table is soft and yielding. I take out a box of my own cigarettes. ‘Oh. You’re a real smoker now,’ she says, and she sounds to be happy about it. ‘What brought that on?’

  ‘I took it up at the agency. I had a friend who smoked.’ I’d say Evelyn isn’t the least bit interested in hearing about the agency, or anyone in it, and I promptly switch to her preferred topic of conversation. ‘Isn’t Peadar very talented.’

  ‘Oh, he is,’ she gushes. ‘He has it in him to be hugely successful. You wouldn’t believe the plans we have together.’ She takes a good long drag of her cigarette. ‘He’s even written a song about me.’

  ‘Has he. A song.’

  ‘It’s called “Caution to the Wind”,’ she says, exhaling, and I watch the plume of smoke flooding into the air before her. ‘There’s something special about Peadar. Pure raw talent. I’d say there’s every chance he’s Jim Morrison reincarnated.’ With the lit cigarette still in hand, she takes up her long dark hair and makes a big bun on top of her head, and then she lets the hair drop down and shakes it out around herself. It’s hard to say what is her best feature. The puffy little mouth or the slinky hair slipping over her shoulders or the intelligent-looking eyes.

  ‘What do you make of Amanda Dowling?’

  She tuts. ‘That’s a shit show due any minute.’ She looks up through a hole in the umbrella and squints. ‘The thing about Maeve is that she always wanted to be somebody else. She was never happy in her own skin. Mary and Tom were always telling her she was a lovely girl and she never believed it. She stopped listening. She was always a bit lost until the letters started coming, and then she became like a new person. Talking differently, wearing different clothes. She even went on a few dates.’ Evelyn’s always been the one to fill me in on what’s really going on with people. It’s the indication we’re picking up where we left off. ‘Amanda’s a piece of work, Katie. She’s a liability. She could ruin Maeve yet.’

  ‘Why d’you say that?’

  ‘She was hooked on heroin by the time she was fifteen, and when she had Maeve, she barely fed her. The neighbours didn’t even know there was a child in the house because Maeve never cried. She was two and a half when she was taken off Amanda and her head was rolling with lice. You remember the bald patch.’ I nod. I remember. ‘The infestation of lice was so severe that the hair stopped growing. It was wicked.’

  ‘That’s awful. I’d no idea.’

  ‘That’s why Maeve is as odd as she is. That’s why I give her the attention and tolerate her and go around with her. Mam told me the whole lot when I was young and swore me to secrecy.’ Poor Maeve has reason to be odd. She has reason to become a crackpot, but still and all, she’s done well for herself. You’d nearly admire her. ‘I’ve been giving out to her non-stop. She has herself convinced that this is some sort of happy-ever-after tale, like herself and Amanda are going to be the best of pals, but I’ve a bad feeling about the whole thing.’

  ‘I suppose we’ll have to wait and see. There’s nothing we can do only wait and see.’

  She sniffs. ‘I’ll be moving on soon, Katie. I’ll be moving on from Glenbruff and Maeve’ll be left behind. I’ve to do my own thing. I’ve to live my own life, and I can’t be watching out for Maeve any more.’

  What’s this now? ‘What are you planning to do? Where will you be going?’

  ‘I’m just waiting on a few things to fall into place but it’ll be a big move. A big change. That’s all I can say.’ Might I be going with her? Would I be welcome?

/>   We hear the rapturous applause for Peadar inside in the bar, and we return to the nook, where Maeve’s sitting with a cross face and the blue starfish reattached to her head. ‘I’ve been minding the seats for ages. I was about to head for home.’

  ‘We were only gone two minutes. Keep your knickers on, Maeve.’

  Peadar comes down to the nook to us and crushes in alongside us. The set was well received and there are drinks arriving down to the table for him. ‘Good man.’ ‘You’re a credit to us.’ ‘Next stop Nashville.’ A drink lands down from Dan Cassidy and Stacey Nugent, who’re perched up at the bar and the two of them half cut.

  ‘I have to say you’re very impressive with the singing,’ I tell him. ‘I enjoyed listening to you.’

  ‘I do a lot of Jim Morrison covers. He’s a big influence. I’ve been reading up a lot on him.’

  ‘What is it about him that appeals to you?’

  ‘Well.’ He leans forward. ‘Did you know that when he was a child, he was with his family driving through the California desert and they came across an accident and there were dead Indians lying on the road. Morrison said he was possessed by their spirits. I had a similar experience to that. The night of Mam’s wake.’

  ‘What was it? What did you see?’ I press him. Maeve looks perturbed and shrinks back.

  ‘Ah. I’ll tell you again.’ He rests his back against the padded seat, looking satisfied in himself. ‘You’ll think I’m losing it.’

  ‘He finds it hard to talk about,’ adds Evelyn.

  Aidan strolls in unexpectedly and I have a big rush in the chest. ‘I heard you were around. I said I’d better stall in and say hello,’ he says. His face is plump and healthy-looking, his skin clean and smooth. His eyes are shining bright, and the white teeth are gleaming. I can tell by looking at him that he’s put himself back together again. The dark blond hair is cut in a conventional style, and he’s wearing a casual shirt with jeans and loafers.