I stood there with the doorknob in my hand and said loudly and as coldly as I could manage, I need money for the milkman, Dad. He jumped. Then he put his hand over the mouthpiece and hissed, God, don’t you ever knock? I didn’t bother to answer, because I had knocked, but he’d been so deep in his lovetalk that he hadn’t even heard me. I just held out my hand, and he dug into his pocket and handed me a fiver, without looking at me. Before I had even closed the door he was back murmuring down the line, and just as I pulled the door behind me I saw his toes curling and uncurling with pleasure inside his black socks there on the carpet. It was disgusting.
I asked him over dinner why he thought it necessary to make secret phone calls, and he went pink. He tried to wriggle out of it, said he wasn’t doing it in secret, he just happened to be in his room when he thought of making the call so he made it up there. I pointed out that he had shut the door. He said he was entitled to shut his own bedroom door, that he was entitled to a bit of privacy in his own house, and that I wasn’t to go barging into his room like that again. Tried to turn the whole thing around and make out I was sneaking around watching him, when all I was doing was behaving perfectly normally. I told him I’d knocked, but he didn’t believe me, and told me it was time I grew up and stopped treating my parents’ room as if it was an extension of my own.
That is just so unfair, but I see it for what it is, a diversionary tactic. Anyway, it’s all pretty clear now. Dad is having a secret affair with the Bay Tree. At least, I assume it’s the Bay Tree. He must have twigged that I was getting suspicious and so he told her not to ring him at home. I bet that meeting last week with a business associate (I mean, what an expression, I should have known that nobody says that sort of thing in real life) was really ‘a date’ with her, as he’d say himself. He’s probably ‘doing a line’ with her. Adults can be so sick sometimes.
Friday 23rd May
It makes you wonder. I mean, Mum is not even two months dead, and there he is throwing himself at another woman. How could he be so callous? He can’t have loved her at all. Or maybe he did just at the beginning. I mean, there’s me, after all, so there must have been something there at one time. I was born six months after they were married. Mum used to joke about it, say I was a miracle baby. When I was small, I used to believe it, that I was really amazingly premature, but when I got older, I realised she was only joking, that she was pregnant when she got married. I used to be proud of that. I felt it proved my parents were unconventional and passionate. Now it makes me wonder. Maybe she pressurised him into marrying her. Maybe she even got pregnant on purpose so he’d have to marry her. Maybe she only wanted an Irish passport. (I haven’t worked out why, though, that’s still a bit obscure.)
I often wondered why I was an only child. I assumed it was something gynaecological. Mum used to have a terrible time with her periods, and when I was about ten she finally had a hysterectomy, so I thought that was it. But now I wonder. Maybe they had given up sleeping together. I mean, they always had a double bed, but you know what I mean, though now I come to think of it, Dad used to spend a lot of time in the spare room, even before she got sick. Maybe he’s been a philanderer all along. The pig.
Saturday 7th June
We’ve reached a sort of truce, Dad and I. He doesn’t ring Margaret, as he now openly calls her, when I am in the house, and she never rings him. But they go out one night a week, and although he doesn’t say he is going out with her, at least he doesn’t pretend he isn’t, if you see what I mean, and he’s never late home. I suspect they have lunch together some days too.
Lisa says it’s all rather sweet and touching, that it just shows he’s a man who needs love in his life. Lisa is interested in love. She is also interested in a lot of other rubbish, such as horoscopes. It’s all very well for her. She comes from a nice normal family. She’s the eldest of five children and her mother job-shares with another nurse and her grandmother lives across the road and gives them their dinner on her mother’s working days and her father coaches football in the local primary school in his spare time and they both always turn up to parent–teacher meetings and one or other of them is always on some committee to do with the residents’ association or one of their children’s schools. I mean, that’s my idea of family life. Going out for a drive with your father and having broccoli soup just doesn’t compare. The graveyard and the French bakery on a Sunday aren’t really in the same league as what goes on in Lisa’s house on a Sunday. Not that I’ve ever been there, but I can imagine. They probably play Cluedo after lunch or do charades around the fire. I bet they don’t get The Great Composers either. Lisa’s father wouldn’t know a Great Composer if one came up and played a quartet in his left ear. But they probably sing rounds when they go places in the car, and I bet their mother buys a copy of Family Circle occasionally and makes delicious recipes out of it and they most probably make each other things out of felt and raffia for Christmas, like the Trapp family.
Oh dear. Christmas. I hadn’t thought of that. Well, you don’t in June, do you, but I mean, I hadn’t thought of Christmas without Mum.
Sunday 8th June
Junior Cert starts tomorrow. English first. That’ll be fine. Between my natural flair and Mr Gorgeous O’Donnell I have that all sewn up.
Wednesday 18th June
Finished the exam. It was a doddle really. Mum used to say it was a curse to be bright. I never understood that. I’ve always found it makes life so much easier if you don’t have to kill yourself working and still come out with top grades. I don’t think being bright was ever a curse to Mum. Poor Mum. Life was a struggle for her really, all those French lessons and creative writing classes. She must have been floundering like mad. She couldn’t even spell, but I suppose that was partly because of being American. She was awfully pretty, though, before she became ill, I mean. How could Dad have treated her like that? The swine.
The others are going on a drinking binge tonight. I couldn’t be bothered. I think that sort of thing is terribly immature.
Thursday 19th June
I don’t believe it. The very first day after my exams – when every other fifteen-year-old in the country has a hangover – he springs this on me. Said he was waiting till I’d finished to break the news. I was looking forward to just lounging about the house for a bit, doing a bit of sunbathing in the back garden, getting a few Ruth Rendells out of the library, sipping mint julep (I got the recipe for this out of a colour supplement, but that’s neither here nor there, it’s still delicious), maybe inviting a few friends over for a barbecue some evening, just not having to think or worry for a change. And then he says he’s been planning this ‘little holiday’ – himself, myself and the three Magees.
This is not a little holiday, Dad, I pointed out, with icy precision. This is a major life-event. Do you realise, I asked, this is our first holiday without Mum? And you expect me to spend it in the company of three complete strangers? He blenched when I mentioned about our first holiday without Mum. (Blenching is a thing people do a lot in books, but it’s not the sort of thing you ever expect to see people do in real life. It’s a bit like wringing their hands in that respect. But he blenched all right. It’s pretty dramatic, but you’d need to see it to understand. I don’t think I could describe it.) He clearly hadn’t thought of it that way. Well, he should have. The stupidity of the man is surpassed only by his insensitivity.
He covered up by saying they were not three complete strangers, that I’d known Margaret for three years. I can’t imagine how he reached that conclusion. I’ve been in the school for three years, and she has too, but it is a school of seven hundred girls and, oh, maybe fifty staff. This is not a situation of intimacy, I pointed out. I never spoke to the woman until that bloody counselling session, and I haven’t spoken to her since, except on the phone once or twice.
Anyway, the upshot of it was I refused point-blank to go. And no, I don’t think that was unreasonable of me. It was unbelievably unreasonable of him to expect me to.
He used all sorts of arguments. That it would be a pretty miserable holiday for both of us if we went together alone. I could see the point of that one, actually. It could be a dreadful strain. It’s bad enough just the two of us sharing this house sometimes. But if that really was the point, he could have asked Lisa along, or Imelda. Now there was a good idea. Why couldn’t he ask Imelda to come on holiday with us?
I know why. It’s not just that he wanted to go with Margaret. It’s that Imelda embarrasses the hell out of him. His own sister. I agree she’s a bit unusual. For a start, she’s a Thalidomide victim, which means she has no proper arms, just sad little hands coming out of her shoulders. She doesn’t use her hands much – well, you can’t if they’re attached directly to your shoulders – and she does most things with her feet, including smoking cigarettes. She’s not really a smoker, she only has about one every two or three weeks, but I swear, she saves them up to have in our house, just to shock him. He can’t bear it when she lights up. I don’t think it’s the smoking itself – he’s not paranoid about cancer or anything, not even with Mum and all – it’s the fact that she does it with her feet. He thinks it’s grotesque.
I’ve known Imelda all my life, so I can’t imagine her with arms, but I know it’s a bit of a shock for other people when they meet her first. The first time Lisa met her, it was in our house, she was doing something in the kitchen, I don’t know, making a sandwich or something like that. Lisa came into the room and saw Imelda struggling with something, and she rushed over all helpfully to her and said, Oh, can I give you a hand? She nearly died of embarrassment when she realised what she’d said. She went bright, bright red. It took Imelda a minute to get it. Then she burst out laughing. She sat down on a chair and she rocked with laughter. Lisa started to laugh too, but mainly from relief, I think. Anyway, they’ve been friends ever since.
Friday 20th June
Dad proposed a compromise solution, and I am considering it. It’s that he and Margaret can go away together for a long weekend. (It was a long weekend that was in question all along, not a full-length holiday. Even Dad wouldn’t be so stupid as to think we could all survive two weeks of each other’s company.) I am to spend that weekend with Imelda. I don’t know what the Magee girls are supposed to do, but that is their problem. And, this is the compromise bit, we are to have the Magees over for lunch on Sunday week, all three of them, the Sunday before their weekend away.
Saturday 21st June
I agreed to the compromise. I don’t see that I have much choice, really. If he invites people to lunch, I have to put up with it. I don’t have to be nice to them after all. That wasn’t part of the agreement. I didn’t actually agree even to be here. I could easily invite myself to Imelda’s that day, or I could even wangle an invitation out of Lisa, I’m sure, but I don’t think I’ll do that. I’m kind of curious actually.
Tuesday 24th June
The more I think about that holiday proposal, the crazier it seems. Could he possibly have done it deliberately to make me accept the lunch invitation without a fight? He’s a devious animal, when all’s said and done.
Monday 30th June
I don’t know where to begin. The menu, maybe, as that’s the simplest part. He did his famous roast lamb with rosemary and garlic, with all the trimmings, mint sauce, redcurrant jelly, roast spuds, glazed parsnips, petits pois (frozen of course), and to give him his due it was absolutely delicious. He served a nice Australian Cabernet Sauvignon with it, but that’s another story. No starter. He says it’s not traditional for Sunday lunch. I think that was quite daring of him, as he was clearly out to impress, but really it showed a certain innate taste. Egg mayonnaise or prawn cocktail would have been just too much. Afterwards we had baked Alaska, which is truly gross, but it’s the only dessert he knows how to make that involves the oven – needless to say he didn’t dare to enlist my help – and he thought he should do something from the oven since it was on anyway for the lamb. He has this rather endearing little economical streak occasionally.
The younger Magees thought the baked Alaska was scrum, even though it wasn’t quite a success – I don’t think the oven was hot enough. They are that sort of family. People who use words like ‘scrum’. Can you imagine? They wore kilts, one in greens and one in blues. They looked like two little girls dressed up to go out to Sunday lunch, which is what they were, except they aren’t little. I bet their mother had them in matching clothes when they were smaller. You know, two little tartan dresses from Laura Ashley, and two matching velvet hairbands. They were, as you will have gathered from this description, unspeakable. Oh yes, and they both had little pearl stud ear-rings, just like their mother’s. No wonder the father bailed out. Between Miss Prim and Miss Proper and the Bay Tree he must have had a dog’s life. I can imagine what their house must be like. I bet they have swagged curtains and a glass-and-brass coffee table, like a hotel, only in miniature. And back issues of The Reader’s Digest in the loo. Ashling plays the double-bass, can you imagine anything more lugubrious?
I wore jeans and a HMV sweatshirt, and I alternated between feeling really cool and hip and, well, normal, and feeling sort of coarse and out of place in this frightfully genteel gathering. I have to admit that I drank too much wine. Dad is pretty laid back about alcohol. I think he has this theory that if children drink at home and with parental approval they are less likely to drink because of peer pressure and so to abuse alcohol. I agree with that theory, actually, and I think I am a shining example of its soundness most of the time. Some people at school go to the pub every Friday night and get paralytic. Admittedly, that only takes two pints of lager, but still, I think it’s pretty revolting. I have the odd glass of wine on a Sunday with my dad, and that’s as far as it goes – usually.
But this Sunday was a bit different. I had my usual glass of wine – Ashling, who is sixteen, was allowed a quarter of a glass, topped up with water, why bother? I thought, it might as well be Ribena at that dilution – and then I snuck another glass, more out of boredom really than anything else. After that, I just kept pouring. Nobody noticed. Well, precisely. I might as well not have been there, as far as the lovebirds were concerned, and as for Little Miss Moffat and Miss Goody-Two-Shoes, they were too busy wiping their mouths carefully with their napkins and saying please and thank you and would you ever pass the butter. They said nothing else throughout the whole meal, just chewed with great concentration.
I felt thoroughly left out. I realised afterwards why. The others were in pairs. The courting couple and the sisters. Only muggins was on her own, sticking out like a sore thumb. I’m beginning to understand why dinner parties are usually arranged to be in even numbers. There is a lot to be said for conventional etiquette, in moderation of course. Now, the pair sitting opposite me – they took one side of the dining table, and Dad and Margaret sat at either end, with me on my lonesome on the other side – for all they looked like a picture out of a Marks and Spencer catalogue, they hadn’t a clue really how to behave. Please and thank you and using your napkin are all very well, but true courtesy involves making the other person feel less uncomfortable. They don’t know the first thing about true courtesy.
So I just sipped away quietly at the Cabernet Sauvignon, and after a bit a sort of a rosy glow descended and I stopped caring about being the only unpartnered person in the room. I probably talked a bit much. I usually do, after a glass of wine, but I don’t think I said anything shameful. I certainly felt rather warm about the cheeks, and I may have been a bit on the waspish side about the baked Alaska. I can’t be sure. But I know I didn’t do or say anything truly outrageous. I know that at one point I told Margaret all the teachers’ nicknames. She didn’t understand most of them, including her own.
I fell asleep afterwards. We all went into the drawing room (Mum’s word – in her attempt to be unAmerican, like most foreigners she often erred on the side of being too English) after lunch for coffee, and this was the point where I fell asleep. I’m sure they all had a great giggl
e about it, but ignorance is bliss to a blind horse, or whatever.
They woke me up after a while, and made me put on a jacket and go for a walk on Dún Laoghaire pier. Dún Laoghaire pier is a lovely place: bracing air, pretty view, the fine misty spray of the ocean and all that. But there is nothing more excruciating than walking along it on a Sunday afternoon with two girls in kilts after just a drop too much wine. I swear to God, they actually linked me, one on either side. Not heartily or anything. Just like old ladies on an afternoon out from their nursing home. They didn’t say a word, just linked me along the pier, under the bandstand bit and right down to the lighthouse place and then a quick spin and back again to the icecream van at the other end, and Dad and Margaret linked each other too and toddled along ahead of us. What has my life come to, that I should spend a Sunday afternoon like this?
Wednesday 2nd July
I went into town yesterday and bought a long black T-shirt and a pair of black leggings. I think I am still in shock after the kilts, and this is my way of coping with it, going to the opposite extreme. I never went in much for fads like all black gear, but now I’m beginning to see the point. It is a statement of dissent from velvet hairbands. I told Dad this when he asked. He hadn’t a clue what I meant, of course. He said I looked as if I was in mourning. Really? I said as caustically as I could manage and he had the grace to blush. The only problem is that I only have my runners and my brown school shoes. I’ll have to save up for suitable footwear. My resources have all been used up on the clothes.
Sisters ... No Way! Page 3