Lisa seemed very low – the comment about the tile was not in character – so I asked her what was up. Then it all came out, that her mum was pregnant again. I couldn’t see what the problem was. She said it was ridiculous having six children in this day and age, and had her parents no shame? That they were old enough to be grandparents. They’re only about forty, actually, but I suppose she is technically correct. I asked was she… She said, Don’t be stupid, I have more sense – more than my mum anyway. Well, I don’t know, she has a boyfriend, nominally anyway, though she hardly ever seems to go out with him. His name is Kieran. In theory I go along with old Iron Knickers (our RE teacher) that it’s more ‘mature’, not to mention infinitely more hygienic, not to sleep with your boyfriend when you’re our age. I hope that if the opportunity arose, I would make the mature decision.
I couldn’t really pin Lisa down about what the problem is. Maybe she is jealous. Maybe she does really think she is the one who should be having babies but won’t admit it. But she says she just thinks it is disgusting people of her parents’ age having sex. You’d think they were wrinklies and dribblies altogether the way she talks. There I was worrying that my parents’ sexual relationship had broken down, and Lisa has the opposite worry. Is there no end to the problems parents cause? Who’d be a teenager? You don’t even have to be in love for it to be a nightmare. Actually, maybe if you were in love, it might even be a bit better. It’d be a bit of a distraction from all the other rubbish you have to deal with. Maybe I should try it. Though I don’t actually know all that many boys.
Anyway, I forgave Lisa for being narky about the tile when I heard what was on her mind, even though it’s a lovely tile and I’d just as soon have it back if she doesn’t want it.
Thursday, 21st August
I should have known. I should have known this just wasn’t going to go away. Dad and Margaret are back together again. I knew that break-up was just a tactical move, just as, I suppose, Dad taking me off on holiday was a counter-tactic. And now we’ve been invited to Sunday lunch at their house, to seal the bond I suppose. I can’t imagine anything more ghastly. I’m sure they just have some very ordinary little place with oversized windows and an open-plan front garden. They’re all like that in Ballywhatsit, where they live, the ones with double-glazing looking down their noses at the rest, and a bunch of token detached ones in a special snobs’ cul-de-sac for £10,000 extra. Not a decent architrave between them, but lots of very deep wallpaper borders used at dado-rail level, for an old-fashioned look. It’s bound to have a horrid little nest of tables, I just know it, and a breakfast bar. I bet Dad wants them to move in together again, though he has carefully avoided mentioning the subject. He is probably fondly imagining his accumulated issues of The Great Composers nestling in her teak-effect magazine rack right now. Ugh!
Well, I’m just not going, and I told him so. I said I’d go to lunch all right, but that he needn’t think he was going to persuade me to move in there with that lot. I said he could move in if he liked. He said not to be ridiculous, he hadn’t a notion of moving in with them, and even if he was, he certainly wasn’t going to do it without me. Well, of course it was ridiculous, but logic really wasn’t the point.
Friday 29th August
Hey! I’ve just had a really amazing idea. Maybe it wasn’t so ridiculous after all to suggest Dad moves out. If he did, I’d have to have someone come and live with me, and Imelda is the obvious candidate. I know she has this really cool flat and all, but she’d have much more space here, and it needn’t be for ever, just till I’m old enough – or until Dad comes to his senses and moves back. I’ll ask her tomorrow, just whether she’d be agreeable in principle. The more I think about this, the more I like it. It could be such fun!
Saturday 30th August
Imelda didn’t think it was such a great idea. Actually, it was a bit embarrassing. She tried to let me down gently, but she said she had her own life to lead, and while I was very welcome to come and visit and stay for weekends and stuff, that really her lifestyle and mine wouldn’t ‘mingle’ in the long term. I never imagined Imelda as having a lifestyle before, apart from going to Bewley’s and the deadly taps and all that. I wonder if lifestyle’s a code word for sex life? Oh god! Everyone seems to have one of those, except me.
Oh, well, anyway, maybe it won’t arise. Dad hasn’t mentioned anything more about moving out or having them move in for a whole week. Maybe he’s gone off the idea, or maybe he’s just decided to drop it for the moment. In fact, he hasn’t mentioned anything very much for ages. He seems, oh, I don’t know, preoccupied. Maybe things are tough at work. Maybe he has more important things to think about.
Monday 1st September
Back to school today. Something of a relief, really, after the turbulent summer I’ve been having. Well, it may not look turbulent on the outside, but it feels turbulent. Why don’t I just behave turbulent, like a normal teenager – take ecstasy, get a nose-ring, go shoplifting? That’d teach him to mess me around like this. But I suppose I am just too sensible and mature for my own good.
We had lunch yesterday chez the Magees. I got dressed up for it. I put on one of the dresses Dad bought me in Lisbon, a really pretty one in sort of café-au-lait cotton with a tiny cornflower-blue pattern, mid-calf length and button-down-the-front, that sort of swings when I walk – something to do with the way it’s cut, I think. It makes it look as if I’ve got breasts. Well, I have, of course, but they’re not much to get excited about. I wore my hair in a tortoise-shell barette and put on the straw hat too, to complete the effect. All that was missing was the parasol.
You know, I thought Dad would like it that I dressed up for his lady love and her brats, but can you imagine what he said? He said there was no need to be so dramatic. Dramatic! Since when is putting on a nice summer dress being dramatic? I know dozens of parents who would be delighted if their daughters would wear something other than jeans. (Actually, part of the reason I got dressed up is that my black outfit is too filthy to recycle for even one more day, but there’s no need for him to know that.) Anyway, I said I’d leave off the straw hat if that would make him happier. He said yes, it would be less of a statement. I don’t know what he meant about a statement. Anyone would think I was going in a bodystocking or a basque, the way he looked at me. Maybe it was the eyeshadow and lipstick he didn’t like, but he didn’t say so and I don’t think it was overdone. Plum, the lipstick is called. It’s a sort of browny purple and good with really pale skin like mine. Maybe that’s what he meant by dramatic.
Anyway, the house wasn’t as bad as I imagined it. It was pretty ugly from the outside all right, except that she has all these lovely rosebushes in the front, but inside it was quite homey and comfortable, in a boring sort of way, of course. I was gratified to see they had an elaborate magazine rack, as predicted, but it was in that honey pine you see everywhere these days.
The food was wonderful, proper steak-and-kidney pie with home-made pastry and real egg crème caramel to follow. I told Margaret how good it was. There is no point in begrudgery after all. Margaret looked a bit pale, I thought, and she swallowed even more often and more audibly than usual. Maybe she is feeling the strain. That is only to be expected.
There was wine, but I didn’t have any, as I didn’t want to end up on Dún Laoghaire pier again. One of the Magee girls had half-a-thimbleful, Magee mère didn’t have any, not even when pressed by Dad – come to think of it, she didn’t eat much either – so Dad ended up having the bottle to himself. He never drinks too much, but he had three glasses, which is way over the limit for driving, so then we had to sit around for hours until he sobered up.
After lunch Ashling and Alva washed up. I would have offered to help, only I was embarrassed, but it was just as embarrassing to sit on at the table while Dad sipped his third glass of wine and fiddled with his tie-pin – I regret to say, he is the sort of man that wears a tie-pin, even on a Sunday – and Margaret tried to make smalltalk with me. She asked me who
my favourite popgroup is, typical adult question to a teenager, a bit like asking a child what class they’re in. I bet the two Magees are into Boyzone. I bet they have posters blu-tacked to their bedroom walls. I said I didn’t follow pop, and do you know what she offered in reply to that? Remember that Margaret Magee is a remarkably unintelligent woman. She said, you’ve guessed, that that was very interesting. It is not very interesting. It is not even mildly interesting. It is merely a fact, and not a remarkable fact. Lots of teenagers don’t follow pop just as lots of over-sixties don’t play bingo. I refrained from saying this, which I think shows remarkable self-control. I can be very self-controlled at times.
It was a relief when the girls came back from the kitchen. I never thought I would see the day when I would be glad to see that pair. Ashling suggested a game of Monopoly. Monopoly! Can you imagine me playing Monopoly? But I did. I didn’t want to be difficult. It wasn’t bad. I was the banker, and I won.
Tuesday 2nd September
Old Gravyface came bobbing up to me in the corridor today and shook my hand. Teachers never do that. I didn’t know how to take it. His hand was very knobbly and damp, like a bag of odd-sized marbles wrapped up in a dishcloth. He asked me if I had had a good summer, and how I was feeling. I said something polite. It’s a bit difficult making smalltalk with a teacher, especially when they have to crane their neck to look up at you. I didn’t realise how much I must have grown over the summer.
Meeting him reminded me that it is going to be very awkward meeting Milly-Molly-Mandy in school. I’ve managed to avoid her so far. I didn’t even see her in assembly this morning, which is odd.
Thursday 4th September
Still no sign of Margaret at assembly. That’s really the only place I am likely to come across her, I’ve decided, as long as I don’t get sent to the staffroom for something. Maybe I can keep out of her way all term, with a little bit of forward thinking.
Saturday 6th September
Managed to avoid Margaret all week in school.
Lisa says her mum is going all mushy, now that she’s past the sick stage. She says it was brutal when she was getting sick in the mornings, but she thinks the mushy stage is worse. I really think she is being a bit silly about all this. Why doesn’t she just enjoy the whole thing? It will be lovely to have a new baby in the house. I said I would go over and help her to mind it when it was born. She snorted at that, which is really not a very attractive sound.
Dad is still very distrait. I hope he hasn’t got financial worries. I read somewhere that fathers worry about financial security a lot, and that if they are out-of-sorts or aloof, it is probably some sort of business worry. This sounds a bit sexist to me, but you never know.
Monday 8th September
Finally saw Milly-Molly-Mandy at school. I’m kind of glad, really, as I was dreading it, and now it’s over and it wasn’t too bad. I was crossing over to the science lab, which is in a separate building from the main school, and she seemed to be coming in late. I think it was about 11 o’clock. By the time I’d spotted her it was too late to hide or pretend I hadn’t seen her, so I sort of half-smiled at her. She gave me a little wave as she locked her car. I was glad I was on my own. If any of the others had seen the little wave, they might have put two and two together and got about fifteen. Not even Lisa knows that Dad came close to moving in with her this summer. She was wearing a very girlish sort of frock, I thought, with one of those things I think you call a yoke, with a silly ribbon tied in a bow at the front. I noticed, because she’s usually in little grey business skirts and polyester blouses. Maybe Dad is making her feel young. Yuck! But I noted with satisfaction that her hair has gone rather limp. Her topiary haircut has gone out of shape because of this, and she looks less like a bay tree and more like a raggy old bush.
Monday 15th September
Junior Cert results came out today. I got five A’s and three B’s. Mr Garvey shook my hand again, his knobbly adam’s apple going ape in his throat, even though I only got a B in maths. Mr O’Donnell congratulated me too, as well he might – A’s in English don’t grow on trees. We found out his first name is Hugh, like the historical Hugh O’Donnell, and Lisa nicknamed him Red Hugh, not because of his hair (which is black and curly), but because of the way he blushes when he talks to you. Red Hugh was very pleased with my result, judging by the shade of crimson he went. I would have been cheesed off if I hadn’t got an A, actually, but you can’t say that sort of thing.
Lisa wants me to go out with the rest tonight, to celebrate. I hate that sort of thing, but she’s been nagging at me, so maybe I will, just this once.
Wednesday 17th September
Yesterday was the worst day of my life. I didn’t go out with the others after all on Monday night, but I still woke up with what felt like a hangover – something I have never had, I hasten to add, I’m just going by other people’s descriptions. I think it must have been a bug, but I’d never have convinced anyone it was if I’d been out the night before. All I did was just sit in and watch TV with Dad. We hardly ever do that. It was quite cosy actually. It was the first time I felt really close to him since Mum died, even including the holiday, which was fun but a bit unreal after all. We didn’t do anything special to celebrate the exam results, but at eleven o’clock we made tea and had gingersnaps with it. We dunked the gingersnaps in the tea until they started to melt. We both had to get fresh cups at one point because we had such a lot of wet gingersnap swirling around in our tea like disintegrating cotton wool with tentacles that it was undrinkable. After that we watched a late night movie. Dad had a can of lager and I had some flat Coke I found in the dining room. Not exactly a champagne party, but I don’t mind flat Coke.
Maybe it was the Coke that did it, now I come to think of it, although I don’t think Coke can really go off. Anyway, in the morning I really felt rotten. Dad called me when I didn’t appear for breakfast. He knocked on my door and put his head around it to ask if I was going to get up. He took one look at me and pronounced me unfit for school. Then he disappeared and came back with a cup of coffee. I took a sniff at it and my stomach turned right over and I broke out in a sweat. Dad disappeared again and came back with a cup of tea, very weak, very hot, very sweet, and I managed to sip at that. He sat at the edge of the bed and watched me. I finished the tea and gave him a little smile. He said, That’s my girl. Then he brought me a basin and a towel, just in case, and a bottle of Ballygowan, and said he’d come home at lunchtime, to see how I was doing. He was so sweet, it was nearly worth being ill to have him be so attentive to me. He can be very nice sometimes, in spite of everything. It is very fine of me to admit that, when you consider what happened later.
It was at lunchtime he dropped his bombshell. I had slept, after he left, till about noon. Then I had a shower, which made me feel much better – I never actually got sick – and wandered around for a bit in my bathrobe, wondering what to wear. Most of my usual gear was in the wash, and I didn’t feel up to the demands of a dress. Then I had a bright idea. I don’t know why I never thought of it before. Mum’s clothes were still in her wardrobe and in the drawers of her dressing table. I went in there and rummaged around. It was kind of sad to see them all folded away so neatly, just waiting to be worn. I must do a proper sort through them some day and decide what I want to keep, and what should go to the Oxfam shop. Anyway, I found a rather nice tracksuit, in a sort of rosy red colour she was fond of. When I put the top over my head, I got a waft of her perfume, except it was a bit musty. It made my scalp prickle.
Then I went down to the kitchen and started to get the lunch. I was still feeling pretty queasy, but I remembered there was some potato soup in the freezer, and I thought I could face that, so I got it out and started to heat it up. It takes a ridiculous length of time to defrost soup. You would have a fresh soup made from scratch while you’re waiting for it. Anyway, there I was, standing at the stove, endlessly stirring this soup-iceberg with a wooden spoon, trying to chip bits off the main lump and
sort of smear it around the bottom of the saucepan, to speed things up. I don’t know if doing that helps, but it’s something to do other than biting your fingernails. As I stood there, I heard Dad’s key in the lock. Hi there! I chirruped, through the open kitchen door, and I could see him stopping dead in the hallway. What’s wrong? I called out. He shook himself out of his torpor then and hung his keys up on the little key-hook by the front door, and then he came on into the kitchen.
He sat down quietly at the kitchen table and said, For a inute there, I thought you were your mother. This was stretching things a bit. I know I was wearing her tracksuit, but I am a completely different shape from her, and I am as dark as she was fair. I have some news for you, Cindy, he said in a very low voice, not like his usual brash self at all. I stopped stirring and went and sat opposite him, a wave of nausea rippling through my body. I don’t know if it was the tail end of the bug – my mouth still felt as if it was lined with steel wool – or if it was apprehension.
I put my elbows on the table and rested my cheeks in my upturned hands on purpose so that I could easily close my fingers over my face if I thought I was going to flush with fear or anger or embarrassment. I felt I needed to be ready for all contingencies. This sounded serious. I thought he might be going to bring up the question of moving in with Margaret again, or her moving in here.
Which, in a sense, he did, only more so, really. He told me that Margaret is pregnant, and that in view of that they have decided to get married next month. I was so stunned that I forgot to throw a tantrum, and by the time I thought of it, it was too late. The moment had passed. I just sat there, my fingers stretched across my face and my eyes smarting. It wasn’t tears. I didn’t feel tearful. I didn’t even feel sad or angry, just stunned, but I felt as if the surfaces of my eyes were cold. I blinked slowly a few times, drawing my eyelids down over my eyes to warm them up. I don’t know how long I just sat there staring at him, blinking and opening my eyes again, but it must have been quite a while, because the next thing I was aware of was the soup burning.
Sisters ... No Way! Page 5