by Alex Coleman
“This one will be different!” Holly countered. “Come on. Whaddayasay?”
There was a brief pause, just long enough for them to overhear a passing hipster scream, apparently at no one, that he was going to get all fucked up and dance, dance, dance.
Then Orla said, “You two go if you like. I’m gonna head on home.” There was no anger in her voice. But neither was there any indication that she was merely tired. The tone was entirely flat.
“Ah, Orla, come on,” Holly said. “Don’t be like that.”
A second or two went by before Aisling added, “Yeah, we’re only getting started.”
“No, honestly.” The monotone persisted. “I’m off. You two go to the party. I’m sure you’ll have fun.”
She didn’t add the words “without me” but they seemed to hang in the air regardless. Holly heard Aisling clear her throat with a spiky little cough and guessed that trouble was coming. She got in quickly.
“Well, if you’re sure. You’re not sick or anything, are you?”
This was a sort of invitation. It was supposed to afford Orla an opportunity to clear the air. She could say something along the lines of “Don’t mind me, I’m in a funny humour” and leave on a reasonably pleasant note while Holly and Aisling cocked their heads to one side and made sympathetic noises.
Orla declined the invitation. She shook her head and said, “No. I’m not sick. I’m just going, that’s all.”
“Oh,” Holly said. “All right then.” Now that it had no tactical value, the party had lost all appeal. She turned to Aisling. “Maybe it’s not such a great idea for any of us.”
“Aw!” Aisling complained. “But I was just starting to get –”
“Don’t bother, Holly,” Orla said as she got to her feet. “You’re wasting your time. She has the scent now.”
Aisling glared up at her. “Scent? What scent? What are you talking about?”
Orla leaned down and more or less spat her next sentence: “The scent of men.”
“What the hell d–”
“We all learned a long time ago, Aisling, that if there are men around, it’s a bad idea to stand in front of you. A person could get trampled on.”
This got on Holly’s nerves more than anything that had preceded it. The word “we” suggested that this was something that she and Orla had discussed before. Worse still, it was something that she and Orla had discussed before – but only in jest. She braced herself, feeling certain that Aisling was about to turn on her. That didn’t happen. Aisling was entirely focussed on Orla. For a moment, it seemed certain that things were going to deteriorate still further. Then Orla gave a small nod, as if she had received some instructions on a hidden earpiece. She grabbed her bag and took off without another word. As soon as she was out of sight, Holly and Aisling turned towards each other and pulled identical faces.
“What the fuck?” Holly said.
“What the fuck indeed,” Aisling agreed. Her strange emphasis on the last word had made her sound like a Jane Austen character, albeit a foul-mouthed one. “She’s been poking at me all night, don’t say you didn’t notice. And that wasn’t the first time lately.”
Holly was reluctant to take sides. “There was tension. I saw that all right. But I couldn’t tell you who started it.”
“She did!”
“All right, maybe she did.” Holly thought for a moment. “Aisling, listen. This is the kind of thing that will fester. You have to go after her.”
Aisling shot her a look. “I’m not going anywhere. You go after her if you want.”
“What’s the point in that?” Holly asked. “It’s you she seems to have a problem with.”
Aisling fumed for a few seconds. “So, let me get this straight: even though she insulted me –”
“Hurry up,” Holly pleaded. “She could be in a taxi by now.”
In truth, Holly had simply been chancing her arm. She was really quite surprised when Aisling got to her feet and made off in the direction of the door. Her surprise deepened when there was no immediate return trip. Fifteen minutes slipped by. It was entirely possible, of course, that they were simply arguing on the street, but Holly doubted that they’d be able to keep it up for so long; one of them was bound to have stormed off by now. She sipped her drink and waited. Then Aisling emerged from the crowd and slumped into her seat again.
“Well?” Holly said.
Aisling took a hefty drink. “She’s depressed.”
“What?”
“Depressed. And she used that word – ‘depressed’. People never say they’re depressed. They say they’re feeling down or they’re under the weather or they’ve got the blues or something. You always know what they mean, but still – to come right out and say it. I took that to be a bad sign.”
“What’s she depressed about? Is it something specific?”
“Yeah. It’s boyfriends. The lack of them.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah. Oh.”
Orla’s almost total lack of experience with men was a subject that came up every so often between Holly and Aisling. They never got very far with it. Their pet theory was that she’d been scarred by the experience of losing her virginity in an alley behind a chipper at the age of fifteen and had been put off men for life. The obvious flaw with this idea was that her subsequent celibacy was completely involuntary.
“What did she say specifically?”
“She said it had been on her mind for a long time – in a serious way, I mean – and that she was finding it hard to be around . . . uh . . . me.”
“Because you’re so gorgeous and all the fellas –”
“Because I . . . don’t have any trouble on that score. Now, let’s skip that bit. I feel like a complete wagon as it is.”
“Huh. So she has no problem being around me.”
“For fuck’s sake, Holly!”
“Sorry, sorry. You’re right. This isn’t about me.”
“Correct. It isn’t. The point is, what can we do?”
“Exactly.”
“Yeah.”
“Exactly . . . ”
“Hmmm.”
They fell silent.
“We’ve had this conversation before, of course,” Aisling said eventually.
“We sure have.”
“‘You’ve got so much going for you.’ All that rubbish.”
“Yup. We’ve done that. Didn’t work.”
“No.”
There was another silence. This one was longer and deeper than its predecessor.
“All right,” Holly said when she finally grew tired of it. “There’s something that needs to be said here. And I’m going to say it.”
Aisling gulped. “OK.”
Holly guessed that she knew what was coming and that spurred her on. “I’ll put it as kindly as I can . . . Orla has . . . let herself go.”
“Yes.”
The response came so quickly and was so emphatic that Holly was further emboldened. “I don’t mean that in a nasty way.”
“No. Of course you don’t.”
“And God knows, I’m no Christy Turlington myself.”
“But it has to be said . . .”
“It has to be said . . . she’s not making the most of what’s she got.”
“You’re right, Holly. You’re so right. It was the first thing that came to my mind too. It’s all well and good to go ‘Boo-hoo-hoo, I never get a second look’ but, for the love of God, lose the baggy jumpers and the grotty runners.”
“Get your hair cut by someone who’s done it before.”
“Put on some make-up once in a while.”
“Cut down on the chip butties.”
“Holly!”
“What? I thought we were agreeing.”
“We are, I suppose, but I was going to leave it at clothes and make-up, not . . . y’know.”
“She’s piling it on, Aisling. You know it as well as I do.”
“Well . . . ”
“Let’s drop the si
sterhood crap. Tough love, that’s what’s needed here.”
“OK. You go first. This is right up your alley.”
Holly felt her shoulders tense up. “Meaning what?”
“Giving out. You’re an expert.”
“Excuse me. I don’t spend my whole life moaning and sniping, y’know.”
“Yes, you do.”
She delivered the line with such simplicity and innocence Holly had no doubt that she wasn’t trying to be funny.
“Anyway,” Aisling went on, “we can talk about this later. Now, you want to go to this party or not?”
“No. I really, really don’t.”
“Let’s get another drink then.”
Holly’s eyes flitted around for a moment. “I think maybe we should call it quits. I’m not in the mood any more. Let’s just give her a chance to get away and then go ourselves.”
“She’s gone now,” Aisling said. “I saw her into a taxi.”
“All right, then,” Holly said. “Let’s go.”
Aisling responded with a frown and a slow, sad shake of her head. Then she grabbed her jacket from the back of their seat and groped around under the table for her bag. Holly did likewise. They adjusted straps and buckles and headed for the exit.
Chapter 5
On the first morning of the new school year, Holly was alarmed to find herself briefly paralysed from the waist down. The problem arose when she was leaning against the kitchen counter, draining a glass of orange juice. Claude had just come through his catflap and was diligently washing himself in a patch of sunlight on the floor. Even though she was already late – the getting out of bed process hadn’t gone particularly well – she allowed herself to be mesmerised by him. He looked so calm and untroubled. Ignoring the fact that he almost always looked calm and untroubled, she couldn’t help but draw an unpleasant comparison with her own state of mind. It was eight twenty. Forty minutes. She had forty minutes left in which to be merely single, as opposed to pathetically, tragically, irrevocably single. Five more minutes went by as she watched Claude make a little washcloth of his right paw before applying it liberally to his face. Then he suddenly stopped what he was doing and gazed up at her. Look at the time – I’d get a move on if I were you. She sighed, swore under her breath and placed her glass on the counter.
It was then that she found that her legs no longer worked. They weren’t numb. They weren’t disembodied. They just wouldn’t carry her in the direction of school, that was all. The effect was more interesting than alarming; she imagined that it must be the same sort of feeling that stage hypnotists induce. She pondered her predicament for a little while and then began to feel deeply silly. “Come on,” she said, peering downwards. “You have to . . .” She paused. Talking to yourself was bad. Talking to your legs specifically was much worse. The distraction of realising this did the trick, at least. Her brain re-established relations with the lower half of her body and suddenly she was in motion. The best approach, she quickly decided, was to keep going and not look back. She went straight past Claude, not even pausing to give him a little stroke, grabbed her jacket from the back of a chair and sped off down the hall. Her car keys were in a wooden bowl on a console table by the door. She grabbed them, undid the latch and more or less threw herself out in one fluid movement. Within seconds she was in the car and pulling out of her parking space in a manner that owed more than a little to Starsky and Hutch. It wasn’t until she was a couple of minutes away from the house that she did a scan of her body and found that every single muscle was clenched tight. She made a conscious effort to relax and smiled with relief as the tension eased. Then she remembered why she’d been tense in the first place. Her muscles re-clenched, her smile disappeared and she slowed to twenty kilometres an hour.
The main building of St Brendan’s secondary school was a large, two-story C-shaped affair, set far back from the main road and partially obscured by a line of stubby trees. The relative abundance of greenery on the site and the long, snaking avenue that bisected it combined to give a false impression of wealth and privilege, Holly had often thought. A first-time visitor could be forgiven for thinking that they were entering an establishment where the pupils wore blazers, owned horses and had neat partings in their hair. That, of course, was very far from the truth. The mistaken visitor would begin to realise as much when they got closer to the main building and noted its many cracks and blemishes. A quick glance through a classroom window would shatter the illusion forever.
There was a small car park on the left at the end of the avenue. Holly slotted into the one remaining space and killed the engine. A peculiar aspect of school life that the teachers often discussed amongst themselves was the phenomenon of car-park abuse. Classroom abuse was really quite rare, despite what the newspapers said, but for some reason the students seemed to think that anything went in the car park. It might not have been so remarkable if the same had been true of the playing fields or the courtyards or any of the other outdoor areas that counted as school property. But it wasn’t. The most popular theory among the teachers was that the area represented a sort of no-man’s land between school life and civilian life. It was nothing to do with indoors versus outdoors. A teacher who was getting into or out of his car wasn’t quite at work and had no real right to complain when someone popped up and called them an arsehole. There were rules, of course. Only in extreme cases – the legendarily nasty Seán Cooper came to mind – would the abuse be a face-to-face affair. Usually, it was more akin to having your pocket picked; you’d realise you’d been hit and would spin around looking for the source, but they’d already have melted away into the crowd. Holly counted herself as one of the lucky ones in this regard. Her name was such an obvious gift that there was no need for anyone to get any more personal. They sang carols at her. They threw tinsel at her. They Ho-Ho-Ho-ed as she went by. Understandably, this last was far and away the most popular. Singing carols took a certain amount of gumption and throwing anything, even tinsel, was a little too close to violence for most. Any fool could Ho-Ho-Ho. And they did. On this particular morning, she had only just emerged from the car – hadn’t even locked it yet – before the first volley sounded. Holly spun to her left and saw immediately who the culprit was – a boy called Fintan Scully. She’d taught him for the previous two years. He wasn’t difficult to spot. For one thing, he had made a real mess of melting away into the crowd, largely because it was still early and there was no real crowd to melt into. He was standing completely exposed with two smaller boys, both of whom were in hysterics, more at his incompetence than his nerve, Holly suspected. There was another factor that made him stand out. He had raised his hands to his mouth for amplification purposes and, worse, said mouth was wide open. Apparently, he had been drawing breath for another Ho-Ho-Ho and when Holly turned to face him, he had simply frozen. It wasn’t until she stepped towards him that he finally dropped his arms to his sides and allowed his gob to close.
“Hello there, Mister Scully,” she said.
He shifted his weight from foot to foot. His two associates took a couple of steps back, as if he was in danger of combusting and taking them with him. “Miss.”
“You do know that you don’t start until tomorrow, don’t you? Just first years today.”
“Yes, miss. Me ma wanted me to see him to the door.” He pointed to his right with his head. “That’s my wee brother. Starting today.”
“Which one of you is the brother?” Holly asked. One of them raised his hand. “And what’s your name?” she asked.
“Cillian. Miss.”
She returned her attention to Fintan. “Did you have a nice summer?”
He nodded. “Miss.”
“What did you get up to, then?”
“Nothing much, Miss. Football, Miss. Hung around. Xbox. That sort of thing.”
“Sounds good to me.”
“Yes, Miss. I suppose it was.”
“So. Junior Cert this year. I’d say you’re really excited about it.”
“You look a bit discombobulated, Fintan. Is something up?”
He frowned and gave “discombobulated” a bit of thought. “No, Miss.”
“You’re not mad at me, are you?”
“Mad . . . at you? No, Miss. Why, Miss?”
“Ah, you know. You were in the middle of a big ‘Ho-Ho-Ho’ there and I turned around and ruined it on you.”
The smaller boys went rigid. Fintan screwed his face up into what he presumably thought was an expression of puzzled innocence; in reality, he looked as if he’d swallowed a bee.
“Miss?”
“I’d hate you to get your year off to a bad start, Fintan, and you not even in uniform yet. Why don’t you give it a lash now?”
“Miss, I wasn’t –”
“Go on. You’ll feel better.”
“You want me to . . . What do you want me to do?”
“The old ‘Ho-Ho-Ho’. Go on. Let ‘er rip.”
He swallowed. “I don’t think I will.”
“No? You sure? This is your last chance, you know, Fintan. If I hear a single ‘Ho-Ho-Ho’ out of you for the rest of the year, you’ll be in detention until you’re forty. But if you don’t want to take me up on the offer . . .”
“No, thanks. You’re all right.”
“Fine,” she said. “It’s up to you. But remember, Mister – until you’re forty.”
He nodded, looking deeply unhappy with the way his life was turning out.
“Go on then,” she said. “On your way.”
They scarpered.
It was remarkable, Holly thought, as she made her way to the front door, how quickly she had slipped back into teacher mode. As soon as the chance arose, it was “Mister Scully” this and “discombobulated” that. She had used the latter word perhaps ten times in her life and all of them had been attempts to wrongfoot a student. In her own schooldays she had often wondered why teachers spoke and acted the way they did. It wasn’t just that they were adults; they seemed to be a particular species unto themselves. Where did the schools find them, all these weirdly different creatures? Now she knew the answer. They weren’t different – they just felt compelled to act that way as soon as they got on school premises. It was all but unavoidable.