by Laura Elliot
I was her bodyguard, strong, tough, and protective. She relied on me to keep her safe from Theo Giles and his boot boy friends who, for a while after the incident in the bicycle shed, waylaid us with water bombs, eggs and globs of spittle on our way home from school. I spoke to Miss Knowles, showed her the egg stains on the sleeves of my blazer. The bullying stopped shortly afterwards.
I no longer hung around with the girls from primary school. My friendship with Karin was intense and exclusive. We couldn’t let an evening go by without phoning each other to report on a row with a parent, a rant about a teacher, a glance from a boy. We sat cross-legged on my bed and sang Adam Ant songs at the top of our voices, a streak of white across our cheekbones, strands of hair braided with bows, jangling earrings.
We both lived in Gracehills but her house was larger than mine, detached and with an extension built on the side. This was where her father wrote books when he was home from his travels. Max Moylan was a travel writer. His books, translated into many languages, lined the bookshelves in his study. I never felt awkward or too tall when I was with him. Even if I had been taller, he would have made me feel petite with a few complimentary words. But Joan reminded me of a ghost, her footsteps too light, her gaze so vague I felt as if she was looking through me. She ran a flower shop in the village. I’d see her through the window as she made up bouquets and chatted to customers. She looked so different then, brisk and busy compared to the woman who became so maudlin and whiny whenever I stayed overnight in their house. Her voice would slur in protest when Max removed the bottle of wine from the table. He would coax her to eat a little and regale us with stories about his travels. Handsome Max Moylan, intrepid traveller and raconteur. We never grew tired of listening to him.
* * *
I was fifteen when the Corcoran family moved next door: mother, father, three sons and a daughter called Jenny. It was impossible not to like Jenny Corcoran. She was my age and mad about hip-hop. She introduced me to groups like Deadly Fish, Combustion EX and Middle-Sized Boyz. I liked the hard, urgent beat of their music and stopped listening to my favourite glam bands unless I was with Karin.
Jenny broke through our closed friendship. We were now a threesome but in the evenings my phone conversations with Karin were no longer artless and rambling. They were focused on Jenny. On the things she had said and done that day to offend Karin. The incidents she described, the insults Jenny was supposed to have inflicted on her were so different to what I’d witnessed that I wondered if we were living in parallel universes. When I tried to calm her down she accused me of taking sides. If I remained silent, unwilling to agree with her tirades, her resentment grew. We’d been friends for two years, she said, and I was allowing someone I barely knew to break up that friendship. Was that what I wanted? I had to choose.
Life without Karin, I couldn’t imagine it. When Jenny called in the mornings I made excuses about not being ready for school. After a few mornings she stopped calling. Soon, she had created her own circle of friends. Watching them in the school canteen, their table crammed with chairs — the arrangements as to who sat where changing constantly but the group never losing its shape — I began to question why my friendship with Karin was so closed-off, so intensely concentrated on each other.
My body was smoothing out. It seemed to happen overnight. A metamorphoses that vanished my awkward angles or, perhaps, they just began to work for me. I lifted my hair and studied my cheekbones, the length of my neck, the smooth roundness of my chin, and did not flinch from my reflection. I stood tall, aware of unfamiliar sensations swooping low in my stomach when boys turned to stare. I hitched my skirt higher to show off my legs, rucked the hated school socks over my ankles, wore my tie at a rakish angle. Karin never had to grow into herself. She still had those same doll-like curves. We rowed more easily now. Trivial arguments could flare without warning. When I was convinced our friendship was over, and I’d be cast aside like Sheila, I was conscious of relief rather than regret. But she always rang, repentant, anxious to make up. And that was how things remained between us until that summer in Monsheelagh Bay when we tore each other apart.
CHAPTER 9
MONSHEELAGH – TWENTY-FIVE YEARS EARLIER
I’d heard so much from Karin about Cowrie Cottage that I believed it couldn’t possibly live up to its reputation. I was wrong. The cottage where she spent a month every summer with her parents was as perfect as she claimed. Perched on a cliff overlooking the Atlantic, it had a thatched roof and windows framed with cowrie shells. My bedroom was tiny, a bed and a tallboy for my clothes. The low growl of the ocean lulled me to sleep at night and I awoke each morning to the call of kittiwakes swirling against the cliff face. A gate at the end of the back garden opened onto two paths. One ran along the top of the cliff and ended with stone steps leading down to Monsheelagh Bay. We used the steps when we needed to carry picnic baskets, windbreakers and the various bits and pieces necessary for a day on the beach. The second path was a shortcut forged through heather, descending in a steep, direct line to the cove. Jagged rocks bordered the base of the cliff and Joan constantly warned us to be careful when using the second path. Not that we paid any attention to her warnings. We had the agility of mountain goats and could reach the beach by this route within minutes of leaving the cottage.
The front garden overlooked the road leading to Monsheelagh Village. A couple of pubs, a bingo hall and a summer carnival offered the only entertainment at night but that didn’t bother us. The weather was glorious and, after a day on the beach, we were happy to stay home at night playing board games, listening to music and talking about Shard. Five of them, Jake, Daryl, Reedy, Hart and Barry, had arrived in a ramshackle van driven by Reedy and they were staying in an old house at the other side of the village. They came to Monsheelagh Bay every day. Its sheltering cliff walls trapped the sun and the cove was a smooth, sandy strand, perfect for volleyball. Jake Saunders stood out from the others as he scooped and dived and ran rings round them, his tanned, muscular body glistening with oil. We planned strategies to attract his attention but walking past in our bikinis or scampering in pretended terror from the approaching waves had no effect on him. He already had a girlfriend, a big-bottomed girl from Galway, who was staying in the caravan park. We watched the two of them strolling hand-in-hand by the water’s edge and sneered enviously over the provocative sway of her bottom in her skimpy polka dot bikini. Sometimes, instead of playing volleyball or French cricket, they’d disappear behind the rocks and later emerge hand-in-hand with reddened blemishes on their necks.
‘Love bites,’ Karin would hiss. ‘She’s such a whore.’
Daryl flopped down on the sand beside us one afternoon and asked if we’d like to join the volleyball team. From then on we were part of Shard’s gang. The Galway girl went home but not before she had bleached Jake’s long black hair with yellow streaks. He reminded us of a tiger and we growled at him, our hands arched like claws. Sometimes the lads would arrive with guitars and an impromptu music session would begin. We raced into the waves, our screams echoing across the cove as we splashed each other before diving headlong into the cold Atlantic swell. Jake would lift Karin up in his arms and fling her back into the water. She was as sleek as a fish, a blonde mermaid with streeling golden hair. Jake never attempted to lift me, afraid, I guessed, that it would not be such an easy task to lightly toss me into the waves.
Max Moylan was abroad for that first fortnight. Somewhere in India, working on another travel book, Joan said in her vague way that made everything outside her range of vision seem irrelevant. She was not drinking and she seemed to enjoy bringing us horse riding through Monsheelagh Forest, playing crazy golf and barbecuing for us in the evenings. One night she brought us to the pub on the sea front where musicians played fiddles and accordions. She drank iced water with a slice of lemon and set-danced around the floor with a local fisherman in a woolly hat, their feet flying in intricate steps too fast to follow.
‘It won’t last,’ K
arin said in a voice loaded with knowledge. ‘She keeps the misery for Dad.’
On Monsheelagh Bay she retreated behind her floppy sunhat and read her book while Karin and I competed for Jake’s attention. I was the fastest swimmer in the group, thanks to my father. Eoin believed I could become a champion swimmer. The training programme he devised for me after I won some local championship medals meant rising three mornings a week before school to do lengths in the Gracehills Leisure Centre. I knew my own abilities better than Eoin. I’d never rise above the regional championships but I could outswim the others. Karin nicknamed me Moby Dick. The inference was obvious. I asked her to stop referring to me as a whale. She laughed and demanded to know when I’d lost my sense of humour. We were no longer prepared to swoon together over Jake Saunders. Karin was determined to have him. And so was I.
Joan roasted a leg of lamb and sprinkled it with sprigs of rosemary on the day Max Moylan was due to join us. Karin painted a Welcome Home Dad poster and hung it over the front door. We blew up balloons and tied them to the front gate. The hour of his arrival came and went. The pungent scent of rosemary evaporated from the kitchen and the lamb cooled on its platter. Karin kept going to the gate to check for his car. Darkness settled slowly during those summer evenings and Joan grew increasingly edgier when the lights were switched on. I avoided looking at the locked press where she kept an unopened bottle of vodka. Would she break the seal on it and pour a measure? Karin sulked in her room and played her music too loudly.
‘Get lost, Moby,’ she shrieked and flung a book at me when I entered without knocking. The warning signs were obvious. Karin and her father, when he finally arrived, would side against Joan, who would drink too much, laugh, talk and cry too much. I’d be invisible to them all, except when Karin reminded me that I’d the attributes of a whale.
Afraid of being overheard if I used the cottage phone I left the house without telling them. I rang Jenny from the phone kiosk on the harbour. Our ways had parted months previously and I hadn’t told her I was going on holidays with Karin.
‘Are you having a good time?’ she asked, her life too busy for grudges.
‘It’s okay,’ I said. ‘I wish you were here with us.’
‘It wouldn’t work,’ she said. ‘Two’s company, three’s a crowd. Karin doesn’t like me.’
‘Oh, that’s not true.’ I wasn’t sure who I was trying to convince. ‘She just finds it hard to make new friends.’
‘I know that. When are you coming back?’
‘Not for another fortnight, more’s the pity. Have you ever heard of a band called Shard?’
‘Don’t think so. Why?’
‘They’re here on holiday. We both fancy the singer.’
‘Is that why you’re fighting with Karin?’
‘I didn’t say we were fighting.’
‘One boy. Two girls. Of course you’re fighting.’
‘Very funny.’
‘Who’s winning?’
‘Neither of us…so far. She calls me Moby Dick.’
‘If she can’t treat her best friend with respect that’s her problem, not yours. Don’t let her get to you.’
‘What are you doing?’
‘There’s disgusting raw sewage flowing into the sea at Dollymount. I’m making a video.’
‘Jenny!’
‘Stinky work but someone has to do it. Dad bought me this brilliant handicam for my birthday.’
‘If I was home I’d go with you.’
‘Would you?’
‘Yes.’
‘Good luck with the singer.’
As if her words had materialised him from the ether Jake suddenly appeared outside the phone kiosk. It was the first time I’d seen him without the others from the band. He grinned when he noticed me and pressed his face against the glass, flattening his features and clawing at the kiosk with his nails.
‘Oh, my God, he’s outside.’ I whispered. ‘I’d better go. I’ll call into see you as soon as I get home.’
‘Best of luck until then.’
I pushed against the door of the phone kiosk and Jake pushed back.
‘Back off, Godzilla,’ I yelled in mock terror and he staggered backwards in an equally exaggerated stumble.
We sat on the harbour wall, our legs dangling over the water. I smoked my first cigarette. He told me the band had taken the summer house to write songs and firm up their act in preparation for the international fame that awaited them. Their manager Mik Abel believed they were Ireland’s answer to Guns n’ Roses. So far, they’d only played a few venues and Barney, the owner of the harbour pub where Joan had danced with the fisherman, had offered them a gig in a fortnight’s time.
I wondered if he would kiss me. Our heads were so close together. Would our breath be heavy with smoke? Should I allow him to put his tongue into my mouth? Would his lips be hard like the rim of a jam jar which was how Dean Redmond kissed? Dean was the only boy I’d ever kissed and the experience had fallen far short of the swooning sensation I’d anticipated. Jake lit another cigarette and talked some more about Shard.
‘Will you and Karin still be here when we play Barney’s?’ he asked.
‘I guess.’ I stood up and tugged at the end of my shorts. I always seemed to be tugging at my clothes, as if, somehow, this would shrink my size. ‘I’d better go back to the cottage. They’ll be wondering where I am.’
He climbed up the steps behind me. I walked with him to the whitewashed pub where the others were waiting for him. The air was thick with smoke, densely packed with holiday makers. A piper played the pipes and a young girl stretched and pleated her concertina in a mournful wail.
‘Call that music.’ Jake threw his eyes upwards. ‘They won’t know what hit them when they hear Shard. See you tomorrow on the beach.’
The main road leading from Monsheelagh Village was bright with street lamps and a blaze of light from the late night pubs. I left Jake at the door of Barney’s and walked towards the winding road leading back to Cowrie Cottage. There was no footpath, just a hedgerow and tall river reeds. The darkness would have been impenetrable except for my torch. The beam wavered before me as something swift and pattering darted across the road. I walked faster, aware that river rats were probably crouched between the stalky reeds. A car approached, the headlights swerving around a corner. I moved into the grass, hoping my feet wouldn’t slip into the ditch below. The car stopped. A light flared inside when the driver opened the door. I froze, afraid to move forward yet knowing I’d never escape if I ran. Why had I been so stupid? Joan had forbidden us to walk this narrow road alone at night. She had feared a road accident but had not mentioned the possibility of being attacked by a murderer or a rapist. My fears disappeared when I recognised Max Moylan.
‘In you get, young lady,’ he said. ‘Walking a country road at night is dangerous. You could easily have been knocked down. I’m surprised Joan allowed you out on your own at this hour.’
‘She doesn’t know I’m out.’
‘Does Karin?’
‘No.’
‘Did you have a row?’
‘Sort of.’ I climbed into the passenger seat. ‘They were expecting you earlier.’
‘Sounds like I’m in the dog house again.’ Max sighed and slapped his hand to his forehead. ‘Oh well, it’s not the first time and it won’t be the last.’ He smiled across at me, a gash of white teeth against his tanned skin. ‘Should I duck when I enter?’
I nodded, remembering the book Karin had flung at me with such venom. I was annoyed with him for spoiling the day. He would breeze into the cottage as if nothing was wrong and Karin would forget her disappointment, forget the hours she’d spent watching out for him. Joan would pour one glass of wine after another and make us forget how lovely she looked when she danced in the pub with the fisherman.
It was as I expected. Max threw out excuses about a missed flight. He danced Joan around the kitchen when she demanded to know what actually kept him. Her feet tangled in his steps. It wa
s obvious that she’d already opened the vodka bottle. She looked clumsy and cross when she pulled away from him and announced it was time to eat.
As we ate the cold lamb Max regaled us with stories about his travels. I imagined him in a turban and sarong, sitting cross-legged in villages, recording voices and taking photographs of withered old faces with life stories written between the wrinkles. Karin was enthralled, her hand resting on her chin, her eyes fixed on his handsome face. Joan rubbed her knuckles together when he talked about the elegance of Indian women in their luminous saris. She picked at her food, poured wine with a steady hand and drifted away from us. She lurched forward and fell when she rose to go to bed. The suddenness of her fall shocked Max into silence. For an instant no one stirred. I wondered if he would leave her there, sprawled inelegantly at his feet. Then we moved as one and bent to lift her. We laid her on the bed and Max pulled the duvet over her.
I saw him the following morning sitting on the rocks in Monsheelagh Bay. His hair was loose from the ponytail and looked as if he hadn’t bothered combing it. I’d risen early to draw the kittiwakes and had my sketch pad under my arm. We exchanged a few words as I walked past. The sky was rosy, the sun just up. We were the only people in the cove. Even when I moved behind one of the rocks and began to draw I could see him in my mind’s eye, sitting with his face turned to the sea. So still he could have been carved into the cliff face. He was still there when I returned. I remember making breakfast for him when we returned to the cottage. Later, Karin came into my room and accused me of monopolising him. It was impossible to argue with her. Her father was not to be shared. Her eyes flashed as she spoke, that glacial blue stare that could suddenly melt, like her mood, and draw me back once again into her toxic, all-encompassing friendship.
CHAPTER 10