by Cathy Kelly
Ivan put two strong arms around her waist and locked them behind her back, pulling her closer to him. ‘I want to know all about you, Maggie Maguire,’ he whispered, kissing her face, ‘every inch of you, every inch of your head, so tell me the truth. Tell me, where did you really get those scars?’
It had all started so innocently on her first day at St Ursula’s, when she’d arrived full of excitement and enthusiasm at being in big school. She and the other first years had spent the morning being shown classrooms and meeting their new teachers. It was a busy and interesting day, learning where everything was, getting used to which lessons would be in which classrooms.
The group of girls were waiting to be told where to go next when it happened.
‘Hey, lanky, what’s your name?’ asked a girl with fair hair, a little freckled face and eyes that made her look older than twelve.
‘Maggie Maguire,’ said Maggie eagerly, not seeing the word lanky as derogatory.
‘Big Maggie, huh?’ sneered the girl, and the small group surrounding her laughed.
Maggie had laughed too, half out of nervousness, half to show that she wasn’t offended.
‘Sandra, you’re a panic,’ laughed one of the gang. ‘Big Maggie—that’s classic.’
A teacher had arrived at that moment and corralled the first years into their classes.
The next morning, Maggie was in early, determined to be ready for this exciting new world.
She was sitting at the front of the class for English, her first lesson, shyly saying hello to other girls, when Sandra and her cohorts strolled in.
‘Big Maggie’s up the front of the class,’ announced Sandra. ‘You’re a swot, are you, Big Maggie?’
Sandra walked past Maggie’s desk and, in one swift move, shoved Maggie’s neatly arranged textbooks on to the floor. ‘Oops. Sorree,’ she said insincerely, and the gang laughed.
Her face crimson and tears burning in the back of her eyes, Maggie bent to pick up her books, hoping somebody would stand up for her or flash her a sympathetic glance. But nobody did. Everyone was too scared.
Maggie wasn’t the only one of Sandra’s victims. There were several more, and as the years went on, the bullying ebbed and flowed. Maggie found if she got to class after Sandra, and ran out of the door before her, then Sandra didn’t bother to follow her.
She became adept at rushing everywhere and trying to be invisible at times like lunch or break.
They even ruined netball for her. When she was alone, she loved the touch of the ball on her hand, the thought of springing it from long fingers into the hoop. But as soon as the bullies were in the background, taunting, teasing, making snide remarks, her hand-eye coordination fell apart. ‘Oh yeah, look at No-Tit Maguire, screwed it up again,’ Sandra would say.
Ever since she’d tried to make her flat chest look bigger, Sandra had swapped the Big Maggie name for No-Tit Maguire. Maggie pretended she didn’t care and ignored her.
‘You’re nothing but a long streak of misery,’ was another of Sandra’s taunts.
In her more charitable moments, Maggie liked to think that maybe Sandra had lots of problems and that’s what made her so hard and cross with the world. That was often what was wrong with people in the books Maggie read: when they were nasty, they were suffering really and they just took it out on the heroine, so that could be the answer.
But after a few years of unrelenting nastiness, she didn’t want an excuse for Sandra or her gang any more, they were just bitches. Kitty, the nearest thing that Maggie had to a best friend in school, had no interest in the theory that Sandra’s life was hard, which was why she took it out on other people.
‘She’s just a cow,’ Kitty said, vehemently. Kitty was small, very clever, wore glasses and lived in the purdah of plumpness, which meant she was Sandra’s ideal target.
Brains was the only obvious link between Maggie and Kitty but the two girls became united in terror. They had agreed there was no point telling anyone about it. The teachers knew what Sandra was like, they couldn’t control her either, or the gang, so it wasn’t as if people didn’t know.
But nobody seemed able to do anything, not even that time in third year when it emerged that Sandra had been taking money from the first years. Nobody knew quite how that had been brushed under the carpet, but it had. Sandra had been off school for two days and then she was back and just as bad as ever, without even a flicker of remorse. In fact, she and her cronies seemed worse now, as if their leader had got into trouble and had walked free, so they felt they had nothing or nobody to fear.
The first and second years stayed out of their way. People in third year, Sandra’s year, didn’t have that option.
‘Why do adults insist on that rubbish that your school days are the best days of your life?’ Kitty said. ‘They’re not, they’re horrible, I can’t wait to get out of this place, away from those low-lifes.’
At least Kitty could talk about it at home. She had an older sister who was now at college and understood that being small, bespectacled and clever wasn’t the route to popularity in school, and comforted her, but there was nobody Maggie could tell. Mum and Dad were so thrilled to see her fabulous reports.
‘Look, five more As and an A+. You’re amazing. Where did we get such a brilliant daughter, Dennis?’ her mum would say delightedly, when the report cards arrived in Summer Street.
The reports always guardedly mentioned that Maggie was quite shy and needed to come out of her shell a bit too, but Maggie knew that her parents couldn’t quite see this because the Maggie they knew at home was funny and merry. She could see them working it out: this classroom version of their daughter was the one who worked so hard she got A+. That must be why only they saw the bright-eyed Maggie at home. In class, she was diligent, that was it.
She didn’t know how to tell them that when she got home she merely felt weak with relief at having got school over for another day.
Telling them about Sandra, about how she didn’t know if she could cope much longer, would have seemed such a failure. Sunday nights were the worst. From about four o’clock on, Maggie could feel her mood sink lower and lower.
Getting her bag ready for school, making sure she’d done all her homework, getting a clean uniform blouse ready, she felt like a French aristocrat climbing into the tumbrel.
She could never sleep on Sunday nights. She’d lie there in her bed, looking up at the stars on her ceiling, wondering if there was intelligent life on other planets and if there was, what did they do about bullying?
The production of The Playboy of the Western World in Maggie’s fourth year brought matters to a head. At St Ursula’s the fourth years—because they weren’t doing state exams that year—put on a play in an attempt to help them understand the work of the great dramatists. There were sixty girls in Maggie’s year and among the twenty-five or so with ambitions to be world-famous actresses, there was huge competition for the big parts in J.M. Synge’s classic.
Maggie, who loved English and had adored the play the first time she’d read it, would rather have had an arm removed without an anaesthetic than get up on the stage and act. So she was able to stand back and watch the fights that went on in drama class. The play would be performed at Christmas with all the funds going towards a charitable concern.
‘I want everyone to be involved,’ insisted Miss O’Brien, the drama teacher, a woman who felt that public speaking was a great skill for any person and simply couldn’t understand why everyone wasn’t clamouring to be involved. ‘It will be so much fun,’ she said, her eyes shiny with emotion, ‘the excitement, the glamour. Now, Maggie, you could be one of the people who help the actresses learn their lines, you’re so good at English and you love this play. That’d be a fabulous job for you.’
‘Oh, no,’ said Maggie instantly, ‘I couldn’t.’ Her school career had been spent trying to slip into the background and she’d learned that hiding was the best form of defence.
Finally, the enthusiastic Miss O
’Brien persuaded Maggie and Kitty and a few of the other quieter members of their year to help with the scenery for the play. The stars of that year’s art classes were going to paint the scenery, but a few more people were needed to put it together, hammer in nails and be general dogsbodies.
‘Maggie, I thought you would want to be more involved,’ said Miss O’Brien sadly when Maggie agreed to work on the scenery but not help anyone learn lines. ‘A sense of community is vital. I’m disappointed in you.’
Maggie said nothing.
She liked Miss O’Brien. It would have been lovely to sit down and tell her the truth.
Miss O’Brien, you don’t understand. I’d love to be doing something with the play, but Kitty and I have safe places we can go to at break and lunchtime to hide from Sandra. We’d be sticking our necks out working with the actresses. Some of the gang are in the play and they would make our lives miserable.
Instead she said none of this, she just looked steadily at the teacher and Miss O’Brien studied the blank face that Maggie had perfected.
‘Well, if you don’t want to use your talents, that’s your loss,’ she said and sniffed to show her disapproval. ‘You could do much more than be in the background.’
Working on the scenery proved to be quite enjoyable and there was a certain satisfaction to be had in cutting up the enormous cardboard boxes they had been given to help create the kitchen floor.
Kitty, Maggie and a few other girls had been provided with Stanley knives to do the work. As sharp as craft knives and much stronger, they ripped into the cardboard easily.
‘Now, be careful,’ Miss O’Brien warned. ‘I don’t want anyone cutting off a thumb or anything.’
‘No, Miss,’ said Kitty gravely. ‘We’ll be careful, we need our thumbs.’
The only person who hurt themselves was Maggie. She wasn’t sure how she’d done it, but cutting towards herself, instead of away as they had all been taught, she’d managed to make a big swipe along her thigh. The knife cut right through her uniform skirt and made an indent, a bloody indent, into the skin of her thigh.
‘Ouch,’ she cried.
‘Shit, what have you done?’ yelped Kitty.
Maggie pulled up her ruined skirt. Her leg didn’t look too bad. There was a sliver-thin stripe of red with beads of blood emerging, like a red crystal necklace, along the rip. And bizarrely, this intense physical pain was manageable. It hurt but she could see the hurt, not like the hurt inside her that nobody could see.
‘I’ll take you to the school nurse,’ said Kitty.
‘No, I’m fine, I’m fine,’ said Maggie. ‘It’s OK, really. I’ll put loo roll on it, it’ll be OK.’
She ran off to the loo, still holding the Stanley knife. Sitting in a cubicle with the door locked, she hesitated before making another slice in her thigh. God, it hurt, but at the same time, it felt…good. She could control this pain. The fierce intensity of the physical hurt took away the pain in her head. This was centred on her leg. She was in control of it and that roar of control surging through her was like a blessed relief from all the hurt. She’d cut herself and let the hurt drip out. Who cared if she was marked or cut? Nobody cared. She’d do it again and feel the power of control over her life again.
Nobody noticed when the Stanley knife went missing. Nobody knew it was in Maggie Maguire’s bedroom and that sometimes, not every night, because she couldn’t do it every night, she cut small marks into her thigh. Over the months, there was a criss-cross of them: red raw and looking like she’d been flayed on one thigh. But nobody saw, she made sure of that. It was easy enough, who was going to see her with her clothes off?
Sometimes the wounds really hurt, stung her and she wondered whether they were infected. So she bought surgical spirit and doused her whole thigh in it, wanting to scream with the pain, and yet, that pain was good too, hurting her like everything else was hurting her. That knife became a symbol, the one bit of control she felt she had over her life.
The night of the dress rehearsal, Maggie and Kitty were waiting in one of the big rooms behind the stage when Sandra and her cronies came in. They were all allowed to wear ordinary clothes and Maggie was dressed in her favourite jeans and boots with a simple fleece. One of her legs was faintly bulkier than the other because it was bandaged up, though nobody else would have noticed. Her thigh throbbed all the time. There were so many cuts in it. But she didn’t care, the pain made her feel stronger.
‘Hello, No-Tit Maguire. Is this what you call fashion?’ sneered Sandra, who was done up like a dog’s dinner in the best schoolgirl hooker look money could buy. Her hair was platinum blonde now and her eyes were hard blue bullets in a ring of eyeliner black as hell.
Maggie’s leg throbbed. She had her knife in the pocket of her fleece. Carrying it gave her a strange courage. She clenched her fingers around it now, feeling the rage well up. Then she felt herself fall over the edge.
‘Fuck off, bitch,’ she howled in feral tones and stood towering over Sandra, her face suffused with anger. She ripped the knife from her pocket and flicked the blade a few notches up so it glinted its dull metallic sheen.
Sandra’s eyes widened.
‘Don’t come near me or Kitty again or I’ll make you fucking sorry,’ hissed the new Maggie.
And Sandra, confronted by someone who was no longer going to lie down and be kicked, backed off.
‘Yeah, whatever,’ she said.
‘Not whatever, you fucking bitch!’ Everyone heard the roar and watched, open-mouthed. Maggie advanced, rage burning in her head. ‘Say it. Say it or I’ll make you sorry. Say you’ll never come near us again, never bully anyone here again,’ hissed Maggie and there was no mistaking her determination.
‘I’ll keep away, right? Calm down, right?’ And Sandra, who had enough cunning to know how to save her own skin, backed off for ever.
‘Mad fucking bitch,’ she muttered from a good way away.
The bullies left and there was utter silence in the room, before Kitty went up to Maggie and took the knife from her.
‘You weren’t acting, were you?’ she asked, putting an arm round her friend and manoeuvring her into a chair.
‘No,’ said Maggie, weak now.
‘You’d be up for an Oscar if you were,’ Kitty remarked. She neatly reversed the knife so the blade was sheathed. ‘I wouldn’t blame you for carving Sandra up into little pieces but she’s not worth the hassle. If one of you has to end up in jail, I’d prefer it to be her.’
Maggie managed to laugh. ‘I can’t believe I did that,’ she said.
‘But I’m glad you did.’ Kitty laughed.
A voice from the corner of the room spoke up: ‘I’m glad you did too. She’s made my life hell for years.’
‘And the meek shall inherit the earth, if that’s all right with the rest of you,’ joked Kitty.
Everyone laughed and the tension was broken.
Maggie looked up into Ivan’s eyes. ‘Do you think I’m a nutcase now?’ she asked, anxiety flooding through her now that she’d actually told him the truth.
He smiled. ‘I think you’re the bravest woman ever,’ he said. ‘I’m so proud of you. That took huge courage.’
‘Not really,’ she said. ‘It was more like madness, really. I just flipped.’
Ivan’s hands touched her leg again. ‘You don’t do this any more?’ he asked gently.
She shook her head. ‘Without her hassling me, life was easier, better. I felt ashamed about cutting myself and I stopped it. I never told anyone, though. It seemed so stupid. I began to like school and she left at the end of that year. The relief! The gang of bitches were never the same without her. They were still nasty, but never to me or Kitty.’
‘My warrior princess,’ he said, hugging her. ‘You vanquished your enemies.’
‘I thought so,’ she said, ‘but the day of your cousin’s wedding, one of Sandra’s gang came into the library and I thought I was going to be physically sick. It all came back to me, Ivan, the fear,
the terror. It was like being a kid again.’ Her voice wobbled and his embrace tightened.
‘They’re the fear I haven’t exorcised,’ she went on. ‘Like my leg, they’re scars that won’t go away.’
‘They’ll go away with time,’ Ivan reassured her.
‘No, I have to face them. Christie Devlin says I probably have to face Sandra to get her out of my head. She’s right, you know.’
Ivan pulled her to her feet and looked stern. ‘If you go near those women, I’m going to be with you,’ he said. ‘Let them try and bully you with me there.’
Maggie hugged him, burying her head in his chest. ‘Thank you, but no. I have to do this on my own.’
Gossip central on Summer Street was the mini-market where the surly owner, Gretchen, ruled supreme. Gretchen’s daughter Lorraine, the one who was married to the rich French pilot, and had been at school with Maggie, had been in Sandra Brody’s gang. If anybody knew of Sandra’s whereabouts, it would be Gretchen.
So that evening, for the first time ever, Maggie went to Gretchen’s checkout on purpose. She might not have had the courage to do it had it not been for the afterglow of a successful meeting with the reporters.
‘Hello, Maggie,’ Gretchen said, with the air of a cat who had a mouse’s tail trapped between her paws. ‘How are you?’
‘Great,’ said Maggie cheerfully. She was ready for tough nuts like Gretchen now.
‘How’s Lorraine?’ she asked idly.
‘Fabulous,’ said Gretchen, seeming slightly surprised that Maggie would ask after Lorraine.
‘And does she still see Sandra Brody?’ Maggie continued.
‘Sandra McNamara, you mean? Not really, I mean you know Lorraine is living in the South of France now…’
‘Yes,’ interrupted Maggie, not wanting to hear Gretchen’s boasting all over again. ‘But they were such great friends in school. Their gang did everything together, didn’t they?’
Gretchen looked shifty for a moment. ‘Well, Sandra was a bit wild really, wasn’t she?’