by Alex Coleman
“Hello there!”
It was Eleanor Duffy. Of course. She was waving for all she was worth as she approached from the top of the avenue, as if Holly was a barely visible figure in the hazy distance.
“What’s the problem?” she asked when she caught up. “Are we not friends any more?”
“Sorry,” Holly muttered. “I was miles away.”
“Not there now. At the entrance. You drove right past me. You nearly drove over me, actually.”
“Did I? Sorry. I didn’t see you. I was –”
“Miles away? Looked that way, all right.”
“Why are you on foot? Health kick?”
“God, no. Car’s on the blink. Timing belt, whatever that is. I should have it back tomorrow. I had to get the bus across and that took a lot longer than I allowed for and . . . Anyway, never mind that, how was your summer?”
She started walking and didn’t pause, apparently assuming that Holly would trot after her. Holly did so.
“Grand. It was grand. How was yours?”
“Great. We had a couple of weeks in France, which was lovely. Mind you, my youngest got a terrible stomach bug as soon as we got back, which kinda took the good out of it, you know?”
“Yeah.”
“So! Tell me. How’s the love life?”
Holly very nearly stumbled. Then she very nearly screamed. Then she very nearly turned for home. She’d known it was going to be bad but . . . she hadn’t even made it inside yet.
“Not bad,” she squeaked for the want of something better to squeak.
“Oh? Brilliant! What’s his name?”
“Robbie,” Holly said. It just slipped out. As her eyes widened and her tongue flapped around in her treacherous mouth, these were the words that filled her mind. It just slipped out. She’d heard a Robbie Williams song on the radio on the way over. That, presumably, explained where the name had come from. The general concept of inventing a boyfriend where none existed remained thoroughly unexplained. They reached the main door then. Eleanor held it open and ushered Holly through.
“Where’s he from? What does he do? Details, woman, details!”
Holly swallowed. “He’s a . . . musician. Robbie’s a musician. From . . . he’s from . . . Galway, originally, but he lives here now. In Dublin. Here in Dublin.”
“Ooh, a musician,” Eleanor cooed. “What does he play?”
“He plays bass guitar.” This lie came quickly and sported none of the hesitation and false starts that had accompanied its predecessor.
“In a proper band?”
“Uh . . . yeah.”
“And what are they called? I’ll have to look out for them.”
“They’re called The Puny Humans.” Again, the lie came easily to her lips. The Puny Humans was a band that Mark had briefly drummed for in his college days. They’d lasted for a couple of months and had eventually split over musical differences: the lead guitarist could play his instrument and the others could not. Lizzie brought out the photos once in a while when she felt like a giggle. To Holly’s relief, her answer seemed to pour cold water on Eleanor’s enthusiasm for the musical line of questioning. Unfortunately, she simply changed tack.
“How long have you been together, then?”
Holly tried to give this one a little thought. She felt sure that one particular lie might do more damage than another, but she couldn’t work out which was which. They’d taken a few steps in silence when Eleanor glanced across to make sure that Holly hadn’t gone deaf.
“I said, how –”
“About a month.”
This seemed like a reasonable compromise.
“Oh, you’re getting close to your record!” Eleanor said. “Well, I’m delighted for you. Only delighted. I hope he works out. God knows, you deserve it after the luck you’ve had. What does he look like? Sorry, that’s very rude. But still – what does he look like?”
The expression on her face was a combination of cheek and mild embarrassment. Holly guessed that Eleanor fancied herself to be getting too old for what-does-he-look-like conversations and was greatly enjoying the novelty.
“He looks a bit like . . . um . . . ”
Faces flashed through her head. None of them seemed suitable. They were at the staff room door now. Voices and laughter came from within. Holly had a moment of clarity. The lie was unsustainable. She couldn’t keep this Robbie character around indefinitely, which meant that sooner or later there would have to be a break-up, at which point her reputation as love’s greatest loser would only be enhanced. In the meantime, even if Eleanor didn’t tell any of the others – which was tremendously unlikely – she would still have to be conned on a daily basis herself. No, there was nothing for it. Holly stopped walking. Eleanor carried on for a couple of steps, then came back.
“Are you all right?”
“Listen, Eleanor. Listen. I’ve got something to tell you.”
“Oh?”
She sucked in some air. “There is no Robbie, Okay?”
“Excuse me?”
“I made him up. Just now.”
The news took a second to sink in. “You made him up?” Eleanor rested her hand on her forehead where it gently trembled. “Oh, Holly . . . you poor thing. I knew things were bad, but I never dreamed they were this bad.”
“Well, things aren’t all that bad, it’s just –”
“You know, I was thinking about you on my walk in. I had my fingers crossed for you. Honest to God, I did.” She shook her head. “Inventing boyfriends. I don’t know what to say. How long has this been going on for?”
“What? About a minute.”
“Holly . . . come on. You can tell me. I won’t judge.”
“Honestly! About a minute! I just panicked a bit when you asked me. I panicked and I made someone up.”
Even before she spoke, Holly could tell that Eleanor hadn’t taken this in.
“Friends, family, God knows who else . . . you must be in a terrible mess.”
“Eleanor. Pay attention. There are no friends involved, no family, no God knows who else. Just you. Got it?”
The last couple of words came out with a degree of venom that she hadn’t meant to inject. Although this was a phenomenon with which Holly was intimately acquainted, it still rankled. She was about to apologise but didn’t get a chance.
“Why me?” Eleanor asked. She looked a little spooked now. “I mean . . . what have you got against me?”
“I haven’t got anything against you, Eleanor. It’s just. . .” She failed to complete the sentence. They stared at each other for a moment. Then Eleanor shook her head and opened the staff room door.
“After you,” she said.
Holly squeezed through. When she turned back, she saw that Eleanor was moving away from her as quickly as she could, given the crowded conditions. “Hello”s and “How are you?”s came from every direction (more were aimed at Eleanor than herself, Holly noted). She gave a general wave to the assembly and tried her best to smile. Then she became aware of a presence by her right shoulder. It was Peter Fogarty. As was his wont, he seemed to have simply materialised beside her.
“I really think this might be my last year,” he said, as he did every September. “What’s the point in having loads of time off if you want to kill yourself when it ends? I’d rather have normal holidays. No highs, no lows, just a nice smooth ride.”
“Yeah,” Holly said. “Hello to you too.”
“Computers,” Peter continued. “I like computers. I could start again, get a new degree or qualification of some kind, anyway. ‘Systems Analyst’. I’ve always liked the sound of ‘Systems Analyst’. It has a ring to it, doesn’t it?”
“Yeah.”
“I don’t know what it means, mind you. Something to do with analysing systems, I suppose. They say –”
The door swung open then and in swept Ursula McCarthy. Almost immediately, the noise in the room fell away to nothing. Holly wondered if Ursula ever tired of it happening every time she app
eared.
“Hello, everyone,” Ursula said, and without even waiting for reciprocation, launched into her Welcome Back address. She expressed her hope that everyone was well-rested and made a couple of limp gags about the disappointing nature of the recent meteorological conditions. With the preliminaries out of the way, she moved on to speaking loftily, yet hopelessly vaguely of the challenges that lay ahead.
As ever, her performance was stupefyingly dull. This was a phenomenon that Holly had never been able to understand. Up close and personal, Ursula was bright, chatty, friendly, sometimes even funny. She smiled almost as much as Eleanor and was one of those people who are given to sudden, frantic gesticulation. Provided she didn’t knock the coffee mug from your hand or poke you in the eye – both fairly regular occurrences – her flailings about could be quite endearing. Put her in front of a crowd, however, and she was immediately bleached of all personality. It was like staring at a shop-front mannequin while listening to a recording of the shipping forecast, played at the wrong speed.
After about five minutes of horrendous tedium, Ursula raised a finger and said, “Oh, as you have no doubt noticed, Louise Dillon isn’t here today.”
All around the room, heads swivelled. Holly hadn’t noticed, actually, and took the swivelling to mean that nobody else had either.
Ursula made another attempt at humour. “What are you all looking around for? Do you not believe me or something?”
Everyone looked in her direction again.
“There’s some bad news, actually,” she went on. “Some of you may know that Louise was a keen mountain-biker.”
“Oh no!” someone cried.
From her unfortunate position, wedged in against a wall behind Peter, Holly couldn’t make out who it was.
Ursula frowned in confusion and then realised what she’d said. “Sorry, sorry – is a keen mountain-biker.”
There was general tittering, followed by some embarrassed coughs as people reminded themselves that this was no laughing matter.
“I got a call from Louise’s husband late last week, informing me that she’d come off her bike while going very fast down a very steep hill somewhere in, uh, Wicklow, I think he said it was.”
Someone said, “Oh no!” again. It was an exact replica of the first “Oh no!” Holly wasn’t sure if it was the same person but it didn’t really matter; the comic effect was too much for her. She barked out a guffaw, catching it at the source with her cupped right hand. A few of her colleagues in the immediate vicinity heard her aborted outburst and half-turned in her direction. She stared straight ahead.
“I’m sorry to say,” Ursula went on, oblivious, “that she did a fair bit of damage. A minor skull fracture and a broken collarbone, amongst other things. A broken wrist, for one.”
Gasps were issued. Holly braced herself for another “Oh no!” but none was issued. She breathed a sigh of relief. There was no way she would have been able to hold it together.
“Yeah,” Ursula said. “Pretty horrific. Needless to say, Louise won’t be teaching for quite a while. By the sounds of things, she won’t be doing anything for quite a while. I’ve organised a sub. He should be here any minute.”
Holly rolled her eyes. She wasn’t a fan of subs; they had it easy. Because they knew that they didn’t have to hang around for the long haul, they had the luxury of choosing the persona that they would present to the pupils. If they felt like being Mr or Mrs Cool, they could project that image in the short-term, knowing they’d be long gone before they were unmasked. If they wanted to act like a strict, no-nonsense hard case, they could do so and, chances were, no one would ever discover them crying in their car one lonely Tuesday lunchtime. Just then, a firm knock rat-tat-tatted on the door. Ursula pulled a face and opened it.
A strange man stepped into the room. The sub, Holly presumed. Her first thought on seeing him was that he appeared to be utterly calm. If he was experiencing any new-guy nerves, he was doing a great job of hiding them. He wasn’t smiling exactly, but he looked as if he had only recently stopped and would probably start again any second now. The second thing that struck her was that he was wearing a suit. There was a teachers’ dress code at St Brendan’s but Holly doubted that anyone, not even Ursula, could quote it to any great extent. It boiled down to “No Jeans, No Trainers”. The men, in particular, seemed to find this directive a little vague and often had trouble finding the right tone, clothes-wise. None of them ever wore a full suit; there was an unspoken consensus that suits were overkill. They were, however, given to showing up in jackets and ties, often of dubious pedigree. It was only a short step from there to the fabled elbow patches and this, astonishingly, was a mistake that one or two of them had made. Not only was the newcomer wearing an entire suit, it looked seriously expensive. His tie hadn’t come from Dunnes Stores either, by the look of it.
“Talk about timing!” Ursula cooed. “My last words were ‘He should be here any minute’.”
The sub nodded. “I was listening through the keyhole. Just wanted to make a big entrance.”
Judging by the expression on her face, Ursula seemed to be on the point of taking this literally. Then she smiled and turned back towards her colleagues.
“I’d like to introduce James Bond,” she said when she was sure that all eyes had turned in her direction. This, Holly presumed, was an attempt at humour that was possibly going to be followed by some gentle ribbing of the school’s normal sartorial standards. It earned a couple of chuckles.
“I know,” the newcomer said. “It’s ridiculous, isn’t it?” He did a little What-are-you-gonna-do? shrug.
There was a pause and then a collective gasp as the penny dropped. It wasn’t a joke. He really was called James Bond.
“Wait a minute,” Larry Martin said. “That’s your real name?”
“That’s right.”
“Your real, real name?”
“Yes.”
“James Bond?”
“Yes,” Eleanor Duffy said. “How many times do you want him to say it?” She stepped forward and extended her hand. “You’re very welcome, James. I’m Eleanor.”
He took her hand and shook. “Hi, Eleanor. Nice to meet you.”
“Short notice, eh?”
“Yeah. But that’s what it’s all about, isn’t it, subbing? I’m glad to be here. There’s only so much Dr Phil a guy can watch. ‘How’s that workin’ out for yeeewww?’”
This last line was delivered in a reasonably good Texan accent. No one seemed to understand that it was an impression of said Doctor. Holly felt sorry for the guy, although he didn’t seem to be at all embarrassed by the ensuing silence.
“You’ll be glad to hear,” Eleanor said then, “that you won’t be alone on the unusual name front.”
Holly’s toes curled.
“Is that so?”
“It is. Believe it or not, we have a Holly Christmas.”
Peter nudged her in the back, as if she hadn’t recognised her own name. Although she didn’t particularly feel like doing so, she thought she’d better step forward and say hello.
“Hiya,” she said. “Holly.”
“James. Nice to meet you.” They shook hands.
“You know what you should say,” Mike Hennessy said, standing on his toes to make himself more visible from his position at the back. “You should say, ‘Bond – James Bond’.” This drew a few moans. Mike swiftly backtracked. “Sorry. You probably get that all the time.”
“Well, I can’t say that was the first time,” James said cheerfully. “But don’t worry about it. If you’re going to have a name like mine, you can’t expect people not to crack jokes. You must get something similar, Holly.”
“Yeah. But I’m not as nice about it. I usually stab them with whatever’s handy at the time.” She gave him a smile and retreated to her original position.
With the introductions out of the way, Ursula went back to the important business of droning. When she eventually ran out of things to say, those teacher
s who were taking the first classes of the day took final sips of coffee and brushed past her into the corridor. Holly was one of them. She hadn’t gone very far before she heard rapid footsteps behind her. They belonged to Peter.
“James Bond!” he said as he caught up. “Imagine that. And I thought your name was bad. I mean . . . I didn’t mean bad, I meant –”
“I know what you meant, Peter,” she said.
“It’s crazy, isn’t it?”
“What is?”
“James Bond! Imagine going through life being called James Bond! I can’t decide if I’m jealous or not.”
“Let me clear that one up for you right now. You’re not jealous. Or at least you shouldn’t be. I know he lets on that he doesn’t mind the jokes, but I bet you any money he’s slammed a lot of doors in his time.”
“Maybe . . . Right, this is me.” He stopped by his classroom door and peered through the little window. “So peaceful,” he said. “So quiet. And half an hour from now . . . ”
“You’ll be grand,” Holly assured him. “Good luck.”
“Yeah. You too.”
The plan, as ever, was that the first years would gather in the assembly hall where they would be addressed and assigned to their classes by Ursula, the vice-principal Greg Tynan and a small sample of the less intimidating-looking staff. Meanwhile, teachers who were due to take the first classes of the day, like Holly and Peter, would prepare for the onslaught. Holly had done everything she needed to do inside five minutes and spent the rest of the time pacing up and down the aisles. It seemed fairly obvious that James Bond’s arrival would have repercussions for her, but she wasn’t sure whether they would be positive or negative. On the one hand, it was possible that there was only so much name-related hilarity to go around. If so, he would surely be the target for most of it; “James Bond” was undoubtedly a richer source of material than “Holly Christmas”. On the other hand, the presence of another person with a stupid name might merely serve to increase general consciousness that there was such a thing. If she wasn’t careful, she could take a lot of collateral damage.