Both Jeanette and I were laughing now. The image of us working on a farm was so absurd. But together, it would be fun, I felt sure.
“Oh, I’d love to,” she said. “It’s a brilliant idea. I haven’t been away like that for years and years. Except to go to the Gaeltacht where you have to speak Irish all the time.”
“It’s a once in a lifetime opportunity,” I said. “You realize that, don’t you?”
“Yeah,” she said, playing along. “I realize that!”
Chapter 11
Jeanette and I were side by side on a Bus Eireann coach taking us into County Meath. She was looking out the window; I was pretending to read. Around us the crowded busload of mostly older people smoked, chattered. The driver’s radio was playing oldies—“Wild Thing.” I liked it.
Wild thing, I think I love you
But I wanna know for sure
So come on and hold me tight...
“What did you say your uncle’s wife was called?” Jeanette asked idly.
“Patricia.”
She nodded. She was being very quiet. I did not feel like talking either. I was beginning to feel a little nervous: would this holiday bore her? Or me? And did my uncle and aunt really want us there?
It was early August. My grandmother had died about three months before. Stevie and I were quite willing to go to the funeral, but my mother discouraged us. Instead she had taken my father. They had left together one Friday night, she tense and fidgety, he scowling and silent. They returned two days later, quite changed: cheerful, relaxed. For the past three months, then, everything had been calm in our house.
The weekend that they were away, though, Stevie brought Ron home. It was literally the first opportunity he had ever had to do it. I was given no prior warning, and still felt jittery when I remembered coming into the kitchen after school (I had walked home with Jeanette and we had delayed, talking, until the evening began to grow chilly) and seeing my brother with his arms around another man. The light wasn’t on, so the figure was hard to make out. I was not sure it was Ron; I did not remember him being so tall. But as they slowly disengaged I saw that it was indeed he, self-possessed as ever.
“Hi, Cathy,” he said, with infuriating jauntiness.
“Hi,” I said, hoarsely. My heart was beating so hard I could hardly speak. Stevie, always in control, murmured: “He’s staying over tonight.”
“Oh, fine,” I said nodding, backing out of the kitchen. I had never felt such an intruder, so out of place. That entire weekend I’d crept about the house like a miserable ghost.
* * *
Jeanette was sleeping, though it was only four in the afternoon. She could drop off at any time, she told me once. I envied her that. I was far too nervous to sleep. “Hello, uncle John,” I said to myself. I had never even seen a picture of him, nor had I asked my mother what he looked like. Ah well, at least I wasn’t alone.
But I couldn’t concentrate on my uncle and aunt for too long. There was something different about Jeanette and me ... a new, unwelcome development. Something I found hard to get out of my mind as I looked at her face, remote and sad in sleep. (She’d told me not long before that she’d fallen asleep during a long bus journey home. Shaken awake by the young bus conductor, she’d leapt up and cried “Daddy! Oh, it’s so good to see you!” She’d thrown her arms around him, and then realized belatedly where she was.
“Dreaming, were you?” the man had said good-naturedly, smiling at her as she backed away, blushing.
Another one of her stories.)
But she hadn’t meant to tell me this one; it had slipped out. We’d been walking home together from school on a May afternoon and she’d mentioned that Carlotta had been persecuting her again. Fintan’s had recently held a dance (a “social”) with another school—one of Carlotta’s former schools—and Jeanette had gone. I hadn’t. Jeanette had said nothing much about how it had been and I hadn’t enquired. All she had told me was that Carlotta had introduced her to a boy called Jasper Robinson.
“So, what happened?” I asked.
“Well, today she said to me at break, ‘Did you get off with Jasper?’ “Yeah,” I said. Then she asked, ‘Did you have it off with him?’ “No, of course not,” I said. I mean, what does she think I am?”
I froze. “You got off with him?”
“Oh, well, yes. Didn’t I tell you? I thought you knew.”
“No, you didn’t tell me!”
She’d shot me a hurt, embarrassed look. “Well, it’s none of your business, really.”
“Oh, sorry,” I said, nastily. We walked along in silence for a few minutes. My anger began to wear off. I should be reasonable, I thought, because this was bound to happen sooner or later. I felt it as a betrayal, but I couldn’t let myself think that way. She hadn’t promised me that she’d never like a boy. And if this person was important to her, I wouldn’t get anywhere by laying down the law, by alienating her. I swallowed my jealousy, with difficulty.
I glanced at her. Contritely, she mumbled: “It was nothing, really ... I just said that to Carlotta, but he kissed me goodbye, that’s all. It didn’t last very long.”
“But you liked him,” I said.
“Yes ... I liked him, but I don’t know if I’ll see him again. I hope I will.”
And I hope you won’t, I prayed silently.
* * *
But she had, of course, and he had begun writing letters to her. His letters were oddly detached in tone. Unlike Paul Donnellan, he never became emotional, never declared himself to be “in love” with her. She pored over his letters. She wanted to know what I thought of them. I said quietly that they were interesting.
And now she was going to be away for a whole month in the country—with me. It upset me to think that she might miss Jasper. They had only met a couple of times. We had months of friendship behind us. But it was not Jasper himself really that I worried about, it was what he symbolized. I did not want someone like that in my life, and the fact that Jeanette needed a figure like him showed me rather graphically that we were after different things.
Yet I hadn’t felt a lessening of affection on Jeanette’s part. On the contrary. She seemed relieved and grateful that I was taking it so well. It was I, in fact, who had grown more diffident. I was pleased with myself for being sensible about the situation. “I’m neither jealous nor envious,” I wrote self-consciously in my diary, “which just proves that I’m completely asexual.”
I took this detachment to be a sign that I was maturing emotionally.
* * *
The bus pulled up to a crossroads. A few people were getting off. This was our stop; I had watched the signposts for the last few miles.
I shook Jeanette, worried that I would have to ask the driver to wait. But surprisingly quickly her eyes blinked open, she said, “Oh, we’re here?” and she bent down and grabbed her large canvas bag, over-stuffed with clothes. I was carrying a rather prim-looking suitcase. As we got down the radio played “Here Comes the Sun.” I hummed along with it.
The bus roared off. It was nearly five, and there were midges in the air, which seemed somehow golden. Long shafts of light shone through the trees onto the road. We could hear the sound of water running over stones. The air was clean after polluted Dublin. And it was very, very quiet.
“Damn! I’m getting bitten!” Jeanette said, doing a little dance. “Aren’t you?”
“Not really. They don’t seem to like my head.”
“It depends on the amount of sugar you have in your blood,” she remarked.
“They’re always worse around water, aren’t they?”
I wandered over to a small stone bridge, which spanned the stream. It calmed me to look down at the water. This would be wonderful, I thought, if I didn’t have to cope with meeting my relatives. What would Patricia be like? Some silly country girl. Of course, she wouldn’t be that young, in her late twenties, probably. But still, my mother had always referred to her as a “girl,” and that seemed significant.
I looked over at Jeanette, who was obviously getting impatient. “Do you think they’ll be here soon?” she asked.
“Well, Patricia told my mother five o’ clock on the phone.”
She walked over and stood beside me.
“Did you have a good nap on the bus?” I asked, smiling slightly.
She smiled too. “Yeah ... I had a dream, now that I think of it.”
“It didn’t seem like a happy one.”
“What do you mean?” she said, on the defensive.
“Nothing. I just ... looked at you occasionally.”
She nodded. Then she said: “I don’t know if you could call it a sad dream. You were in it.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Doing what?” I asked impatiently. She hesitated, avoiding my eyes. A car had pulled up on the other side of the road. A woman was at the wheel.
“Shit, here she is,” I said, swallowing.
“I’ll tell you later,” Jeanette said quickly, and as our eyes met I felt suddenly reassured, though of what exactly I could not say. Something had started between us again, some switch had been pushed. Jasper had shaken things up a bit, but things between us were essentially the same, I thought.
* * *
Patricia was a surprise. She resembled a young Vanessa Redgrave, with the same tint of red in her thick, wavy hair, and large blue eyes which were not watery and cool like Vanessa’s, but warm, laughing.
“So you’re Cathy!” she said.
“Yes, hi. And this is my friend Jeanette.”
Patricia twisted around to smile at Jeanette in the back seat, who nodded shyly. She was squashed up against two redheaded toddlers in baby seats. Both were feeding themselves from bottles. They regarded us gravely.
“Are they twins? They’re lovely,” I said, meaning it.
“They’re a year apart, actually,” Patricia said. “Aren’t they dotes? Jacky’s two and Patsy’s over a year. Aren’t they good lads?”
She smiled at her children, who beamed back.
Patricia released the brake, and we drove off. I was aware of Jeanette, silent in the back, and felt sorry for her suddenly. What would it be like to be dumped amongst someone else’s relatives? If I felt nervous and awkward, what must she feel?
“I thought uncle John might be collecting us,” I said to Patricia.
She laughed. “Ah no. John’s impossible. He’d never use the car if he could get away with it. He rarely stirs from the fields. I do all the driving in this family!”
“Well ... thanks for having us.”
“Not a bit of it. Her voice was light, caressing almost. “You’ll be worked hard, I can tell you. You’ve come at the busiest time of the year. It’s great for us, actually. There’s always a shortage of young hands.”
I nodded, relaxing a little more. “I suppose emigration’s hit hard in this area?” My question sounded a bit sociological, as if I were some visiting professor of anthropology. In a way I felt like that; the countryside was a mystery to me. I liked it, but I didn’t
know it yet.
She shrugged. “Ah, yeah. And to be honest, not a lot of young people want to stay on the land. There’s not much money in it.”
“Are you a farmer’s daughter yourself?”
“No,” she said, her eyes on the road. We were passing through hay fields now. I could smell them from the open window, dry and fragrant. “My father owns a pub in Kells.”
In the silence I heard the lowing of cattle, far off.
“That’s where I met John,” Patricia continued. “I was there behind the bar every night. He’d come in for his jar. I’d wanted to be a teacher, you know, and I’d even gone to the training college in Drumcondra for a year. But I couldn’t stick it. Something told me, this isn’t what you want to do with your life. I hadn’t wanted to be a farmer’s wife and my father had encouraged me to study ... get out, live in the city, you know. But back I came. And John was there one night and he said, “Oh, it’s you.” He sounded so glad. We’d hardly talked before. But we got to talking, and one thing led to another. My father thought I was mad. The people around here always said the O’Donnell family was a bit ... strange. Kept to themselves a little too much for their own good. And then Susan—your mother—flying off to Dublin one night. Well, it was a long time ago, that. But there are stories. Everyone thought your uncle would die a bachelor. They nearly fainted when I told them I was marrying him. I tell you, Cathy, it’s done him an awful lot of good.”
“I’m sure it has,” I said. I felt comfortable with Patricia, more comfortable than I’d ever felt with any older woman, including my mother. The realization shocked me a bit, but it seemed so natural. John was very lucky, I thought. I almost envied him. Patricia was beautiful. And lovable. The phrase “happily married” seemed suddenly to make sense. I sighed, sad now, and aware of my own loneliness. Would I ever be part of a couple?
I glanced around at Jeanette. She was staring out the window, her face sullen. Bored, probably. Of course. Why should she be fascinated by Patricia? Or by the children? She was thinking of Jasper, no doubt. I wished, not for the first time, that I could read her thoughts. We had never been open with each other, never shared fully the truth of what lay between us. And perhaps there was nothing, just my imagination and a few misread signals.
I was no longer relaxed. I sat stiffly in my seat, trying to banish this terrible anxiety that had come upon me so insidiously. I clenched my fists.
“We’re here,” Patricia said softly. We had drawn up to a comfortable looking two-storey house, plastered, with a slate roof and shutters on the windows. Nasturtiums bloomed in a box on the window ledge.
I thought of my house, cheaply built, drab, resembling its neighbor, which was attached to it like an unloving twin. It had even been named for us by the builders. This place looked proud. It stood alone, surrounded by acres of fertile land. No one watched what went on here. The house kept its secrets. I liked it for that.
* * *
Inside, the house was cool, very simply decorated. The walls were white, much of the furniture Victorian. There were fireplaces in the bedrooms, big stuffed armchairs, a huge oak kitchen table. There was green linoleum on the floors, except in the kitchen, where John had had cork tiles laid down. Patricia showed us over the house, noting here and there the improvements that John had made.
Then she left us to our room. “It used to be your mother’s,” she informed me with a smile as she shut the door. “I’m going down to put on the dinner now.”
Jeanette put her huge bag down on the floor and flopped out on one of the beds.
“You look tired.”
“I feel wrecked. I don’t know why ...”
I sat down at the end of her bed. “Shall I take off your shoes? You’ll feel better.”
“OK,” she said, rather dubiously.
Once the cheap plastic shoes were off, I could see the red marks they’d left on her feet.
“Why do you torture your feet?” I enquired. I began to massage them, at which she giggled slightly. I worked my fingers between the toes and tried to give them space.
“I know.” I jumped up suddenly, having had a brainwave. In my toiletries bag there was a bottle of peppermint foot lotion from the Body Shop. It was pink. Jeanette eyed it with disfavor and said, “Oh, Jesus.”
“It’ll do you good.” I massaged her ankles gently, turning her feet this way and that. It felt strange to touch her skin, but natural. I might actually have a knack at this, I thought.
“Now, tell me about your dream.”
She sighed. “OK.” There was a pause. Then she said, turning her face so that I couldn’t see it:
“We were together in a classroom at school. Then we were walking down a corridor. Suddenly Carlotta appeared behind us, so we started to run. Holding hands. But we just kept on running down corridor after corridor, with Carlotta gaining on us. I remember being terrified. I thought she was going to kill us. Then Su
sie O’ Sullivan popped out from behind a wall and grabbed me. You ran on. I screamed after you but you disappeared. Then I remember thinking: Oh, it’s not so bad. Carlotta came up, smiling, you know the way she does. And all I remember is them laughing and putting their arms around me.”
“What a nightmare,” I said nervously. “How claustrophobic.”
“Well, I sort of liked it in the dream ...”
I said nothing.
She turned to me, her face flushed. “You see? That’s all. It doesn’t mean anything.”
I shrugged. “Well, I disappear ... “
“I don’t think that’s going to happen, do you?”
“I don’t know,” I said. “Do you?”
“You’re taking all this far too seriously,” she muttered.
I sat on my bed, which was pleasantly springy. “I’d hoped for a different sort of dream, I suppose.”
She didn’t take me up on this comment, but began putting her clothes away in a small chest of drawers. There was one for me too, but I didn’t make a move to start unpacking. I lay back on the bed. So my mother had slept in this room. There was no trace of her, no records, pictures, books. Perhaps her angry parents had thrown them all out.
And when we left, I thought, nothing of us would remain here. It was a tidy, impersonally furnished room. Perhaps that did fit in well with my mother’s personality, come to think of it. Did something about this room make us strangers with each other?
Jeanette was a much more serious person these days. I wanted my old restless, reckless friend back. She seemed tortured by her life. That was the impression I got. Or by herself? Did I make her feel worse about herself; was I a thorn in her side?
Before school had broken up I’d come into a classroom one day to find Jeanette sitting with Susie and Carlotta at a table. Stunned, I’d sat down and put my books out. Jeanette kept getting up to go; she’d seen me. Carlotta pushed her down, saying (falsely and insincerely, I thought) “Stay with us, Jeanette, we’re enjoying your company.”
“No, no, I’m sorry, I have to go, I’ll see you later. Cathy’s waiting,” Jeanette had babbled, springing up, clutching her books and coming over to me. Carlotta stared at us with a meaningful smile. I didn’t like it, so I tore my eyes away from her.
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