by Marian Keyes
‘He nearly brained the child,’ Clarence intoned, far too close to my ear.
Vincent, on the other hand, was irritating me because he was in such a good mood. In flying form because he’d got his wife to bring in the Babyboomer Trivial Pursuit questions with her. He waved the red box around in Stalin’s face. ‘Now we’ll see who’s so great at getting the pieces of pie, so we will!’ He crowed triumphantly. ‘Now that you’ve had no chance to learn the new answers off.’
Stalin burst into tears. He’d been hoping that Rita would come and visit him and call off the divorce, but there had been no sign of her.
‘Let him alone!’ Neil turned on Vincent. When Neil realized he was an alcoholic, he spent a day or two crying, then took Vincent’s place as Mr Angry. He raged against himself for being an alcoholic, but he also raged against everyone and everything else. Josephine said his anger was to be expected, that no one wants to be an alcoholic, but that he’d come to terms with it soon. We couldn’t wait. In the meantime we were all terrified of him.
‘The poor fecker is in bits about his wife,’ Neil roared into Vincent’s face. ‘So don’t be tormenting him any further.’
‘Sorry.’ Vincent looked mortified. ‘I wasn’t, it was only a joke…’
‘You’re very aggressive, so you are,’ Neil bellowed.
‘I know,’ Vincent mumbled humbly. ‘But I’ve been trying hard…’
‘Not hard enough!’ Neil slammed his fist down on the table.
Everyone started heading for the door at high speed.
‘Sorry,’ Vincent muttered.
Everyone paused and began to return.
Things quietened down briefly until Barry the child raced into the dining-room, all of a dither. Apparently great ructions were in progress upstairs because Celine had found Davy reading the racing pages. As Davy was a compulsive gambler, that was as bad as someone like Neil being found distilling homebrew under his bed.
According to Barry, Davy had gone ballistic. So much so that Finbar the gardener, handy man and all-round, general half-wit had to be called upon to restrain him. With that, there was a surge from the dining-room, Barry the bringer of glad tidings at its head, as everyone ran for ringside seats at the mêlée.
I didn’t go.
I was too narky to be bothered.
But, when the dust had settled, I perked up to discover I was alone in the dining-room with Chris. Even bitch-face Misty had left.
‘Are you OK?’ he asked gently, coming to sit beside me.
I looked into his blue-water eyes and felt tingly from his beauty.
‘No,’ I shifted. ‘I feel… I feel… I don’t know, just fed-up.’
‘Right, I see.’ He thoughtfully ran his big square hand through his wheat-coloured hair, wearing a becomingly worried face while I breathed hopefully at him. Oh, how I savoured being the centre of his attention!
‘What can we do to cheer Rachel up?’ he said, as if he was just talking to himself. I positively squirmed with pleasure.
‘Let’s go for a walk,’ he suggested brightly.
‘Where?’ I asked.
‘Out there.’ He nodded at the window.
‘But it’s dark,’ I protested. ‘And cold.’
‘Come on,’ he urged, with one of his special wry smiles. ‘It’s the best I can offer you.
‘For the moment,’ he added, tantalizingly.
I ran to get my coat and the two of us went out into the face-numbingly cold night and marched around the dark grounds together.
I didn’t say much. Not by choice. I would have loved to talk to him, but I was nervous and my brain did what it always did when I was nervous. It turned into a lump of concrete; grey and heavy and empty.
He didn’t strike up a conversation either. We walked for a long time in silence, the only sounds our breathing, as we blew out clouds of vapour in front of our faces, and the crunch of the grass under our boots.
It was too dark to see his face. So, when he said ‘Hold it, hold it, stop a second!’ and put his hand on my arm, I didn’t know what he was up to. My down theres leapt with the anticipation of a furtive, sylvan grope. And I regretted wearing six layers of clothes.
But he was only linking arms with me.
‘Give me your arm,’ he said, crooking my elbow into his. ‘OK, off we go again!’
‘Off we go indeed!’ I said, trying to pretend, with my excessive jolliness, that I wasn’t at all bothered by my contact with him. That my breathing hadn’t become shallow and ragged and that a thrill hadn’t shot, like an express train, from my elbow straight through to my loins.
On and on we stamped, side by side, arms and shoulders touching. We’re nearly the same height, I told myself, trying to turn it into a virtue. We’re well matched.
Being so close to him made me feel better about Luke. It helped calm my fear that he’d met someone else. It soothed my raw emotions. Momentarily, at least, I was so filled with desire for Chris, it blocked out the awful memories of Luke.
I yearned for Chris to kiss me. Longing made my head light. Almost mental with desperation.
What wouldn’t I give…
To my alarm, I found we were almost back at the house.
Already?
The light from the windows shone near us, so that we could see each other in shadow.
‘Look.’ Chris turned to me, his face into my face, almost touching. Every nerve ending leapt onto full alert, certain that a clinch was coming.
‘See that big bathroom there,’ he pointed, his body tantalizingly almost touching mine.
‘Yes,’ I said thickly, following his outstretched arm, as it pointed up at a lighted window. He didn’t move any closer to me, but he didn’t move away either.
If I breathe out a lot, my stomach might touch his.
‘Two people were caught having sex in there,’ he said.
‘When?’ I could hardly speak, as he kept me there, hovering on the brink.
‘A while back.’
‘Who were they?’ I forced myself to ask.
‘Patients, clients, whatever we want to call ourselves. People like us.’
‘Really,’ I mumbled, wondering where all this was going.
‘Yeah,’ he chuckled. ‘Two people like you and me were caught having sex in that very bathroom.’
It sounded as though he had deliberately structured that sentence for maximum provocativeness. But then he moved away from me and I felt like I’d fallen off a cliff.
‘What do you think of that?’ he asked.
‘I don’t believe you,’ I said, my voice dull with disappointment. All that anticipation and nothing to show for it…
‘Honestly,’ he promised, his eyes flashing sincerity in the darkness.
‘No way,’ I said, finally able to fully concentrate on what he was saying. ‘How could people be so… so… I mean, how could they break the rules like that?’
He laughed. ‘You are so surprisingly innocent,’ he drawled. ‘And I thought you were a wild girl.’
Furious with myself, I spluttered ‘Oh, but I am. Honestly.’
‘Will we go back in?’ He nodded at the house.
Confused and frustrated, I nodded. ‘OK.’
47
On Monday morning in group Josephine turned her attention to Mike and humbled the living daylights out of him.
‘Mike, I’ve been meaning to get back to you,’ she said, sounding apologetic. ‘It’s about time we looked again at your alcoholism, isn’t it?’
He declined to reply. Just stared as if he’d like to maim her.
Great, I thought gleefully. While someone else was in the hotseat, it meant there was no room for me.
Josephine turned to the room at large. ‘Have you any questions for Mike?’
Do you perm your hair? I wondered. And if so, why?
No one said anything.
‘OK,’ sighed Josephine. ‘I’ll do it myself. You’re the eldest of a family of twelve?’
‘I am,’ Mik
e agreed loudly.
‘And your father died when you were fifteen?’
‘He did,’ Mike bellowed.
‘That must have been hard?’
‘We managed.’
‘How?’
‘By working hard.’ Mike’s ugly face was stonier than ever.
‘On the land?’
‘On the land.’
‘Cattle?’
‘Mostly arable.’
I hadn’t a clue what they were on about.
‘Long days?’
‘Up in the dark and still working when the sun went down,’ Mike said almost proudly. ‘Seven days a week and no such thing as a holiday.’
‘Very commendable,’ Josephine murmured. ‘Until your drinking got out of control and you disappeared on week-long binges and the work stopped getting done.’
‘But…’ Mike began.
‘We’ve had your wife in here,’ Josephine cut him off. ‘We know all about it. You know we know.’
And off she went. All morning she worried away at him.
She tried to get him to admit that he kept himself so diverted trying to organize his entire family into a slick workforce, that he never got a chance to mourn his father.
‘No, no, no,’ he insisted, annoyed. ‘We had to get a system going, otherwise we would have starved.’
‘But why were you the one who had to do it?’
‘I was the eldest,’ he mumbled painfully. ‘It was my sole responsibility.’
‘It wasn’t,’ said Josephine. ‘What about your mother?’
‘My poor mother,’ Mike stammered. ‘I wouldn’t want to worry her.’
‘Why not?’
‘I think the world of my mother,’ Mike said quietly, as if Josephine should be ashamed for asking such a question.
‘Yes,’ Josephine said quietly. ‘You’ve an odd attitude to women, haven’t you? The Madonna/whore distinction is very marked in you.’
‘Wha…?’
‘Anyway, we’ll come back to that some other time.’
Despite her intensive cross-examination, he wouldn’t admit to anything.
After lunch my luck held because Misty was for it. A double blessing. Anything bad that happened to her cheered me up immensely. And while she was being humbled it meant I wasn’t.
I’d got off fairly lightly, I realized. I was sure that they wouldn’t bother with the questionnaire at such a late stage in my stay. Apart from that one day when she’d questioned me about my childhood, Josephine hadn’t given me too hard a time. And only five days to go before I could leave. Five days to convince me I had a drug problem? Well, I didn’t give much for their chances.
With that in mind, I was able to really enjoy Misty being trashed by Josephine without worrying that the same thing was in store for me.
And trash her she did. Josephine suspected that Misty had only relapsed as a publicity stunt.
Which Misty vigorously denied.
‘This isn’t a plug for Tears before Bedtime, my new book,’ she insisted. ‘I’m not in here just so that my new book Tears before Bedtime gets publicity.’
She looked fragile and delicate and beautiful. ‘Really I’m not,’ she insisted, her large eyes pleading don’t-misunderstand-me.
I wanted to puke, but there was a shamed silence from everyone else.
Suckers, I thought, furious that they couldn’t see how they were being manipulated.
‘You couldn’t be more wrong,’ she protested, allowing a little quiver to appear on her bottom lip.
More shame. More silence. Josephine watched her with narrowed eyes.
‘I’m actually looking for material for my next book,’ Misty added, almost as an afterthought.
There was a stunned silence, before a clamour of questions broke out.
‘Will I be in it?’ John Joe asked excitedly.
‘Will I?’ Chaquie asked in alarm. ‘You won’t use my real name, will you?’
‘Or mine,’ Neil said anxiously.
‘I’ll be the hero, won’t I?’ Mike swaggered. ‘The one who gets the girl?’
‘What about me?’ Clarence began.
‘STOP IT!’ Josephine roared.
Nice one, I thought smugly. Give her hell. I wondered if I could let this slip to Chris. It would be good for him to know what a shallow little hoor she was. Although, I thought doubtfully, I wasn’t sure Chris was that interested in Misty’s strength of character.
‘This is your second time in this treatment centre,’ Josephine raged. ‘When are you going to take it seriously? For God’s sake, you’re an alcoholic!’
‘Of course I’m an alcoholic,’ Misty calmly insisted. ‘I’m a writer!’
‘Who do you think you are?’ Josephine spat. ‘Ernest Hemingway?’
I smirked with glee.
Great stuff.
Then Josephine tore strips off Misty for being such a flirt.
‘You’re deliberately and extremely provocative to many of the men here. I’d like to know why.’
Misty wouldn’t cooperate, and Josephine got nastier and nastier.
The afternoon was a pleasure from start to finish. But at the end, as I was slipping out the door for the great tea-drinking, Josephine grabbed me by the sleeve. In a second I went from being relaxed and good-humoured to paralysed with terror.
‘Tomorrow,’ she said.
Oh no, my brain screamed. Oh no! Tomorrow is questionnaire day. How could I ever have thought I’d avoid it?
‘Tomorrow,’ she said. ‘I thought it was only fair to warn you…’
I felt close to tears.
‘To give you a bit of time to prepare yourself…’
Thoughts of suicide raised their heads like little buds in the early spring.
‘… Your parents will be coming in as your Involved Significant Others.’
It took a second or two to absorb it. I was so focused on Luke and the horrible things he might have said about me that for a while I didn’t know what parents were.
Parents? Do I have parents ? But what do they have to do with Luke?
‘Ah, right, so,’ I said to Josephine. I walked to the dining-room, absorbing what she’d told me.
OK, I realized, thinking fast, the situation wasn’t as catastrophic as it could have been because they knew very little about me. But all the same, I was frightened. I had to ring Mum and Dad and find out what they were planning to say.
The counsellor lurking in our midst was the small and cute-looking Barry Grant. When I asked her if I could make a phonecall, she complained loudly ‘Orr ay, Rrachel gail, I’m ’avin’ me sea.’
She kindly gestured at the cup of tea in front of her, so I had a vague notion of what she was saying.
I fidgeted and fidgeted until she finally stood up and led me to the office. As we passed through reception, I was surprised to see Mike perched up on Bubbly the receptionist’s desk.
Is Bubbly a Madonna or a whore? I wondered.
‘A lovely girl like you?’ He was crooning and twinkling at her. ‘I’d say you have to beat them off with a shitty stick.’
Whore, I think.
‘Oi!’ Barry Grant roared at him. ‘Norr again! I’ll ‘ave you.’
Mike jumped several feet.
‘Ah, good luck, I’ll see you again,’ he said hurriedly to Bubbly, and bolted for the door.
‘Stay away from the gails,’ Barry Grant bellowed after him.
‘And stop encouraging him,’ she barked at Bubbly. ‘You’re supposed to be a professional.
‘Come on, you,’ she shouted at me – I suppose she didn’t want me to feel left out – ‘What’s the number?’
Dad answered the phone by saying ‘El Rancho Walsho.’ I could hear ‘The Surrey with the Fringe on Top’ playing in the background.
‘Hello, Dad,’ I said. ‘How’s the acting? The roar of the greasepaint, the smell of the crowd?’
I thought it politic to pretend we were friends. That way he might be nice about me the following day.
‘Mad fan,’ he said. ‘And how’s yourself?’
‘Not so mad fan, actually, what’s this I hear about you coming to be my ISO tomorrow?’
I heard an intake of breath so sharp he sounded as if he was being garrotted.
‘I’ll get your mother!’ he squeaked. Then the phone clattered onto the table.
There followed ages of loud whispering, as Dad filled Mum in on the situation and they each tried to blame the other.
‘Whisper whisper whisper,’ went Mum anxiously.
‘WHISPERWHISPERWHISPER!’ Dad replied frantically.
‘Well, whisper, whisper.’
‘You’re her whisper, whisper whisper whisper women’s work!’
I caught the general gist. ‘What’ll I say?’ Mum hissed.
‘Just tell her the truth,’ Dad hissed back.
Then Mum hissed ‘Tell her the truth yourself’.
And Dad hissed ‘You’re her mother, that kind of a caper is women’s work.’
Dad must have threatened to cut Mum’s housekeeping because Mum eventually took the phone and in a shaky, fake-up-beat voice, she declared ‘D’ you know something, but the only good Surrey is a dead Surrey. He has me tormented with that Okla-bloody-homa. And, listen to this, you won’t believe this, do you know what he asked me to get for him in Dunnes, grits! To have for his tea, as it were. Well, what are grits, sez I. Cowboy food, sez he. Sure, the only grit I know is the stuff you find in the bottom of a bird cage…’
When I eventually managed to get a word in, she reluctantly confirmed that, yes, she and Dad were coming in to make shite of me.
I found it hard to believe. Even though I was in a treatment centre and this kind of thing happened to people, it wasn’t supposed to happen to me. I wasn’t like the others. And that wasn’t some sort of mad, addict’s denial. I really wasn’t like the others.
‘Well, come if you must,’ I sighed. ‘But you’d better not be mean about me, or who knows what I might do.’
Barry Grant reached for a pen as soon as I said that.
‘Of course we won’t be mean about you,’ Mum quavered. ‘But we have to answer the woman’s questions.’
Which was exactly what I was afraid of.
‘Maybe, but you don’t have to be mean about me.’ Even to my own ears I sounded like a thirteen-year-old.