by Marian Keyes
‘How are you feeling today?’ He looked lovely, the pale blue of his chambray shirt enhancing the colour of his eyes.
‘OK,’ I said cautiously.
‘Can I make a suggestion?’ he asked.
‘OK,’ I said, even more cautiously. I really didn’t think this was going to be one of those me, him, no clothes and a condom ones.
‘Well,’ he went on, ‘I know you don’t think you need to be here, but why don’t you try and get the best out of the place.’
‘In what way?’ I asked carefully.
‘You know the life story thing they make you write when you’ve been here a while?’
‘Yes,’ I said, thinking of what John Joe had read in my first session of group.
‘Well, even if you’re not an addict,’ said Chris, ‘It can be very helpful.’
‘How?’
‘You know how it is,’ he said, with a wry smile that made my insides feel funny, ‘we can all benefit from some kind of psychotherapy.’
‘Can we?’ I hooted in surprise. ‘Even you?’
He laughed, but in a sad way that made me shift uncomfortably.
‘Yes,’ he said, with a ten-mile stare that took him far away from me. ‘We can all do with help being happy’
‘Happy?’
‘Yes,’ he said.‘Happy. Are you happy?’
‘God, yes,’ I said confidently. ‘I have a lot of fun.’
‘No, happy,’ he repeated. ‘You know, content, serene, at peace with yourself.’
I wasn’t that sure what he was talking about. I couldn’t imagine feeling content or serene, but more importantly, I didn’t want to feel that way. It sounded frighteningly dull.
‘I’m fine,’ I said slowly. ‘I’m perfectly happy except for some things in my life that need to be changed…’
Like just about everything, the thought forcibly struck me. My love-life, my career, my weight, my finances, my face, my body, my height, my teeth. My past. My present. My future. But other than that…
‘Think about doing your life story,’ Chris suggested. ‘What harm can it do?’
‘OK,’ I said reluctantly.
‘With your ex-boyfriend’s questionnaire, that’s two things you have to think about.’ He flashed me a smile. And then he was gone.
I stood looking after him in confusion. I couldn’t understand what was going on. I mean, did he fancy me or didn’t he?
I sat down – I’d missed the good chairs – and tried to see from Josephine’s face whether I was for it or not. But, in the wake of Emer’s visit, the focus was on Neil. I was deeply satisfied when the group addressed some of the glaring discrepancies between what Emer had told us about Neil and what Neil had told us about Neil.
Neil was still saying that, if they lived with Emer, they’d beat the crap out of her too. And, while none of the others were as mean as I would have liked, they kept trying to point out to Neil that what he was saying was wrong. On and on through the morning they laboured, Mike, Misty, Vincent, Chaquie, Clarence. Even John Joe managed a couple of words about how he’d never raised his hand to a calf.
But Neil steadfastly refused to admit to anything.
‘You’re disgusting,’ I eventually burst out, unable to help myself. ‘You big bully.’
To my surprise, there wasn’t the expected chorus of agreement from the others. They just turned the same compassionate faces on me that they already had on Neil.
‘Is that right, Rachel?’ Josephine asked. I instantly wished I hadn’t said anything. ‘You don’t like the bullying side of Neil?’
I said nothing.
‘Well, Rachel,’ she said. I could feel something unpleasant approaching. ‘The things we dislike most in others are the characteristics we like least in ourselves. This is a good opportunity to examine the bully within you.’
You couldn’t fart in this place without a laughable interpretation being placed on it, I thought in disgust. And she was wrong. I was the most unbullying person I knew.
To my great relief, the spotlight was on Neil again in the afternoon. Still no mention of my questionnaire.
Josephine had decided the inmates had been given enough of a chance to help Neil and that now it was time to send in the heavy guns – her.
It was fascinating. Josephine referred back to Neil’s life story, which he’d read in a session before I’d arrived. With spot-on accuracy, she unravelled his life, as if she’d just pulled a loose thread in a jumper.
‘You said almost nothing about your father,’ she said agreeably. ‘I find that omission very interesting.’
‘I don’t want to talk about him,’ Neil blurted.
‘That’s perfectly obvious,’ she replied. ‘Which is exactly why we should talk about him.’
‘I don’t want to talk about him,’ Neil said again, louder this time.
‘Why not?’ Josephine had got that dog-with-a-bone light in her eyes.
‘I don’t know,’ said Neil. ‘I just don’t.’
‘Let’s find out, will we?’ Josephine said, with fake comradeship,’ Why you don’t want to.’
‘NO!’ Neu insisted. ‘Let it be.’
‘Oh no,’ she insisted. ‘Letting it be is the last thing we should do.’
‘There’s nothing to tell.’ Neil’s face had darkened.
‘There’s obviously plenty to tell,’ Josephine said. ‘Why else are you so upset? Tell me now, did your father drink?’
Neil nodded warily.
‘A lot?’
Another wary nod.
‘That’s a rather important detail to omit from a life story, isn’t it?’ Josephine said shrewdly.
Neil shrugged nervously.
‘When did he start drinking heavily?’
There was a long pause.
‘When?’ she barked again.
Neil jumped and said, ‘I don’t know. Always.’
‘So it’s something you grew up with?’
Neil assented.
‘And your mother?’ Josephine prompted. ‘You seem very fond of her?’
Grief dragged his face. ‘I am,’ he said in a hoarse, emotional voice that surprised me. I had thought the only person Neil loved was himself. That he probably shouted his own name when he was coming.
‘Did she drink?’
‘No.’
‘Not with your father?’
‘No, it wasn’t like that. She tried to stop him.’
A deep hush had fallen on the room.
‘And what happened when she tried to stop him?’
There was a horrible, tense silence.
‘What happened?’ Josephine asked again.
‘He hit her,’ he said thickly, tears in his voice.
How does she know? I wondered, amazed. How did Josephine know to ask such questions?
‘Did this happen often?’
There was a tortuous absence of sound until Neil blurted ‘Yes, it happened always.’
I got the same sick feeling I’d had the day before when I found out about Neil beating Emer.
‘You’re the eldest child in the family,’ Josephine said to Neil. ‘Did you try to protect your mother?’
Neil’s eyes were faraway, in a frightening place in the past. ‘I tried, but I was too small to do any good. You’d hear it downstairs… you know? The thumps. The slaps, the cracks…’ He paused and opened his mouth as if he was going to puke.
He placed the palm of his hand across his open mouth and we all stared at him, bug-eyed with horror.
‘And she’d try not to scream, you know?’ he managed, with a twisted half-smile. ‘So that it wouldn’t upset us, upstairs.’
I shuddered.
‘And I’d try and distract the others, so that they wouldn’t know what was happening, but it made no difference. Even if you couldn’t hear anything, you could feel the fear.’
My forehead was sweaty.
‘It always happened on a Friday night, so as each day in the week passed we got more and more scared. And I
swore that when I was big enough I’d kill the bastard, I’d make him beg for mercy the way he made her.’
‘And did you?’
‘No,’ Neil struggled to say. ‘The fucker had a stroke. And now he sits in a chair all day long, with my mother dancing attendance on him. And I keep telling her to leave and she won’t and it drives me mad.’
‘How do you feel about your father now?’ Josephine asked.
‘I still hate him.’
‘And how does it make you feel that you’ve turned out exactly like him?’ Josephine asked, the mildness of her manner not hiding the apocalyptic nature of the question.
Neil stared, then gave a shaky smile. ‘What do you mean?’
‘I mean, Neil,’ Josephine said with emphasis, ‘that you are exactly like your father.’
‘Not at all,’ Neil stammered. ‘I’m nothing like him. I always swore I’d be completely different from him.’
I was stunned at Neil’s complete indifference to the truth.
‘But you’re just like him,’ Josephine pointed out. ‘You behave exactly like him. You drink too much, you terrorize your wife and children and you’re creating a future generation of alcoholics in your own children.’
‘NO,’ Neil howled. ‘I don’t! I am the opposite kind of man from my father.’
‘You beat your wife the way your father beat your mother.’ Josephine was relentless. ‘And Gemma – she’s your eldest? – probably tries to shield Courtney’s ears from the sounds of it, the way you did with your brothers and sisters.’
Neil was nearly hysterical. He pressed himself back into his chair, terror on his face as if he was up against a wall, surrounded by savage, barking, baying pitbulls.
‘No!’ he wailed. ‘It’s not true!’
His eyes were horrified. And as I watched him, I had the shocking realization that Neil really did believe it wasn’t true.
There and then, for the first time in my life, I truly understood that fashionable, bandied-about, over-used word – denial. It made my intestines cold with fear. Neil couldn’t see it, he honestly, really couldn’t, and it wasn’t his fault.
A glimmer of compassion sparked to life in me. We sat in silence, the only sound Neil’s sobs.
Eventually Josephine spoke again.
‘Neil,’ she said matter-of-factly, ‘I appreciate that you’re in tremendous pain at the moment. Stay with those feelings. And I’d ask you to bear in mind some things. We learn behaviour patterns from our parents. Even if we hate those parents and their way of behaving. From your father, you learnt how a man is supposed to behave, even if on one level you abhorred it.’
‘I’m different!’ Neil howled. ‘It’s not the same for me.’
‘You were a damaged child,’ Josephine continued. ‘And in some ways, still are. It doesn’t excuse what you’ve done to Emer and your children and Mandy, but it does explain it. You can learn from this, you can heal the damage in your marriage and in your children, and most importantly of all, in yourself. This is a lot to take on board, especially considering the extent of your denial, but luckily you’re here for another six weeks.
‘And the rest of you.’ She threw a glance round the room. ‘Not all of you are from alcoholic homes but I’d advise you not to use that as an excuse to deny your alcoholism or addiction.’
30
We limped back to the dining-room, drained after all the emotion of the session.
Every afternoon, after group, two of the more senior inmates went to the sweetshop in the village and brought back lorryloads of cigarettes and chocolate. The placing of the orders was a lively affair.
‘I want chocolate, so I do,’ said Eddie, to Frederick who was writing down orders on an A4 pad of paper. Frederick had the biggest, reddest nose I’d ever seen. ‘Name me out something nice.’
‘Turkish Delight,’ he suggested.
‘No, too small, gone in one bite.’
‘Aero?’
‘No, I’m not paying good money to eat holes.’
At this there was a shout of ‘Ah, ye tight-fishted bollix,’ from Mike, Stalin and Peter, who were passionately discussing the merits of ice-cream Mars bars over ordinary Mars bars. (‘The ice-cream ones are three times the price.’ ‘But they’re miles nicer.’ ‘Three times nicer?’ ‘Well, I don’t know about that.’)
‘Curly Wurly?’ Chris suggested.
‘Didn’t I just say I’m not paying good money to eat holes.’
‘And the chocolate always falls off,’ Clarence added.
‘Double-Decker?’ Nancy said. Nancy was the fiftyish housewife who was addicted to tranquillizers, and this was the first time I’d ever heard her speak. Talk of chocolate had cut through to that twilight world she seemed to inhabit.
‘No.’
‘Fry’s Chocolate Creme?’ suggested Sadie the sadist, who happened to be present.
‘No.’
‘Toffee Crisp?’ From Barry the child. ‘No.’
‘But they’re lov…’
‘Minstrels!’ Mike offered.
‘Topic? A hazelnut in every bite?’ From Vincent.
‘Walnut WHIP?’ Don hooted. ‘Lose yourself in a Walnut Whip DREAM?’
‘Milky Way? ‘Peter.
‘Bounty?’ Stalin.
‘Caramel? ‘Misty.
‘Revellers.’ Fergus the acid casualty.
‘Revels.’ Clarence corrected him.
‘Fuck off.’ Fergus was annoyed.
‘A Picnic,’ Chaquie said.
‘A Lion Bar?’ Eamonn.
‘I think Picnics and Lion Bars are actually the same thing,’ Chaquie said.
‘No they’re not,’ fatso Eamonn insisted. ‘They’re quite different. The Lion Bar has peanuts in it but the Picnic has raisins. They’re superficially the same because they’re both wafer-based.’
‘All right,’ Chaquie conceded.
Eamonn smirked.
‘You’d know if anyone would,’ she added.
Eamonn tossed his head haughtily and his jowls wobbled like a bowl of jelly.
The suggestions continued to pour in. ‘A Fuse?’
‘A Galaxy?’
‘A Marathon?’
‘Wait!’ Eddie shouted. ‘Wait, back up a bit, a what?’
‘A Fuse?’ asked Eamonn.
‘Yes,’ Eddie declared, his face redder than ever with joy. ‘A Fuse. Are they new?’
Everyone looked at Eamonn. ‘Newish,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘They were introduced to the Irish market over a year ago and have sold consistently well, appealing to people who want relatively uncomplicated confectionery but without the traditional eight-square format. They’re an interesting blend – a fuse, if you will – of raisins, crispy cereal, fudge pieces and, of course…’ he delivered a winning smile around the table’… chocolate.’
Everyone nearly stood up and applauded.
‘He’s great, isn’t he?’ Don murmured. ‘Really knows his stuff.’
‘OK,’ said Eddie, sold. ‘I’ll have seven of them.’
‘So will I,’ Mike shouted.
‘Put me down for five,’ yelled Stalin.
‘Me too.’
‘Six.’
‘Eight.’
‘Three,’ I found myself saying, even though I hadn’t intended to order anything. Such was Eamonn’s oratorial power.
Then everyone ordered a hundred cigarettes each, a few tabloids, and off Don and Frederick went into the cold evening, down to the village.
After tea, as we loitered in the dining-room, Davy looked up from his paper and exclaimed. ‘Look! Look! Here’s a picture of Snorter out on the razz.’ There was a mad surge as everyone gathered round to look.
‘Looks like he’s back on the sauce,’ said Mike sadly.
‘He didn’t last long, did he?’ said Oliver.
They all shook their head despairingly and seemed very, very upset.
‘I thought he was going to be OK,’ murmured Barry.
‘He said he was really going
to try this time,’ said Misty.
‘I suppose in his line of work – groupies, cocaine, Jack Daniels…’ Fergus said wistfully. ‘What can you expect?’
A pall had settled over the table.
‘Is this Snorter out of Killer?’ I asked cautiously. Killer was a crappy heavy-metal band, that, despite their crappiness, were very popular. Luke probably had all their records.
‘That’s the fella,’ said Mike.
‘How do you know him?’ I asked, nonchalantly. I didn’t want to make a fool of myself by jumping to any conclusions.
‘Because he was HERE!’ Don screeched, his goitrey eyes almost bursting from his head. ‘In here. With UZZ!’
‘Is that right?’ I murmured, my heart doing a little flutter of hope. ‘And what was he like?’
There was a chorus of approval for Snorter.
‘Lovely fella,’ said Mike.
‘Sound man,’ agreed Stalin.
‘Grand head of hair on him,’ said Clarence.
‘Awful tight trousers, the way you could see his goose-pimples,’ said John Joe.
‘Awful tight trousers, the way if he doesn’t watch himself he won’t father any children,’ roared Peter, then convulsed with laughter.
However, if the tabloids were to be believed, Snorter had no problems in that department, having already been taken to court several times by women on the receiving end of his overworked gonads.
‘And where did he… er… stay?’ I tried to be diplomatic. But I found it hard to believe he could have stayed in one of the crammed bedrooms. Snorter was no stranger to first-class hotels.
‘He stayed in with us, of course,’ said Mike. ‘He had the bed between me and young Christy here.’
Well, well, well, I thought. So the occasional famous person really did stay at the Cloisters. But the knowledge brought me no joy. Not much brought me joy, as I lived in the shadow of the questionnaire.
The three Fuses helped, though.
31
The following morning in group my relief was almost hysterical when it became clear that John Joe was to be centre stage.
Josephine started in on him immediately. ‘Last Friday, we were looking at your romantic and sexual history,’ she said. ’Perhaps you’ve had some time to think about it since then.’
He shrugged. I could have predicted that.