The Leaving

by Gabriella West

  And again, on that dark bus journeying back across the city ... if only I had dared to move towards her then. Had she secretly hoped that I would?

  But it was all academic now. She wasn’t the same girl who had sat on that bus with me; she wasn’t even the same person who’d lain down in Patricia’s kitchen garden and fallen asleep, while I watched over her, struggling with my desire.

  I distrusted her now. Her friendliness did not soothe me or content me; it so plainly wasn’t enough. And the thought that she was dredging up memories of our good times together to please me was very irritating. I had invested those memories with my love for her. To hear them prattled off as if they were no more than amusing incidents in some childish past we had shared made me feel as if my take on them was totally wrong, foolish even.

  Still, I was prepared to stick by my version and sometimes the need to tell someone became so strong that I felt like saying to Jeanette as she made some smiling, bland remark about how we used to do this or that, “you know, we were lovers.” Of course, I thought, then she would protest that we had only slept together once, that it wasn’t the same thing as a love affair, that we were just friends who happened to stumble into bed together because we were drunk.

  We never had this conversation. But even then I had the sense that if we had been slightly different as people, or if the society in which we had been raised had been more open about homosexuality, had allowed it at least to be visible, our history might have taken another course. Instead, the most important event of my life had been erased. I was supposed to consign it to oblivion so that Jeanette could move on. She had, but I hadn’t. I just couldn’t.

  * * *

  It’s hard when being with someone is torture and being without them is too. I suppose Jeanette thought she was being kind when she invited me out for a drink with Carlotta and some others to celebrate the last day of school. The Leaving was a week away, and Susie was at home studying for it, more to pacify her parents then for her own sake. She had “gone off” Carlotta anyway. No one was sure why, but gossip hinted that Carlotta had stolen a boy she was interested in. Carlotta denied this and pointed out that if any stealing had been done it was only temporary. “I just wanted to have him first, that’s all,” she said as we sat around a table in a dingy little pub on the quays called O’Grady’s. I was sipping my drink with clenched teeth; this was the kind of talk that made me want to leave. How could boys be any worse than this, I thought angrily, as I watched Jeanette giggle, eyes glued to Carlotta’s pale, freckled face. She was tossing back a rum and Coke. She could afford to drink now, with her job. I couldn’t with the pocket money I was getting, so she paid for me. Oh well, I pondered as I emptied my glass, it would only have gone to the Blind.

  Carlotta’s insolent blue eyes focused on me. “So, Cathy, is this the first time you’ve been out drinking?”

  She thought so little of me. The feeling was mutual.

  “Oh no,” chimed in Jeanette, always eager to impress, “We got really drunk on her uncle’s poteen, didn’t we, Cathy?”

  I winced. “Well, you did. I wasn’t really that plastered.”

  She blushed.

  “So, where was this?” Carlotta enquired. She seemed amused.

  “At a farm in County Meath,” I muttered.

  “Oh, a farm!” Carlotta said mockingly. “God, Jeanette, you never told me you’d been on this farm!” She raised her eyebrows.

  “I bet there’s a lot of things Jeanette hasn’t told you.”

  I saw the alarm in Jeanette’s eyes, and the interest in Carlotta’s. “Like what?” she asked, while I could see Jeanette desperately casting around for a change of subject.

  I said nothing. It was tempting to betray Jeanette, to throw the whole thing on the table and let it blow up in her face. The mad mother, the absent father, what had happened between us, her job (which I had heard her lying about to Carlotta). All Carlotta knew about her was that she had liked Jasper (that was long over), she had gone out with a lot of different boys, she had done strange, wild things while drunk or on speed, but she didn’t know the Jeanette I had known, the real person.

  In a bored voice, Carlotta said, “We’re waiting.”

  Jeanette held a cigarette in her fingers. I watched them tremble. Suddenly I said, “Why did you ask me if I got off with Jeanette?”

  That broke the tension. Carlotta’s friends tittered, Jeanette’s eyes widened and I could see her gasp. Carlotta gave me a long, appraising look. Her eyes narrowed.

  “Oh, that was a long time ago. I can’t remember. I really can’t tell you why I said it. It’s just one of those immature things you do and they’re funny at the time. Later they seem a bit embarrassing.”

  She was flustered. I pressed on.

  “But what was the rationale behind the question? I’d really like to know.”

  “Would you?” She enquired. “Well, I suppose the fact that you were so lovey-dovey at the time. It just struck me. I thought, God, what’s up with these two? Still waters run deep, you know!”

  There was a silence. Jeanette was looking down at the table. It must have seemed a double betrayal to her: Carlotta having said the thing in the first place, me repeating it months after the event.

  “So was there anything between you two?” Carlotta asked, her voice back to its original needling tone.

  I shrugged. Jeanette glared at me and said indignantly, “No. Of course not. Jesus!” Her scandalized response was so predictable that I chose the moment to rise from my seat. I wandered over to the bar. The bartender was serving a boy in a leather jacket down at the far end. I peered over at him through the smoky air. He hadn’t seen me. I walked down past middle-aged men seated on tall stools morosely supping their pints. It struck me that I must finally be drunk, because I kept having to blink. Perhaps I should just walk out the door and go home. I yawned. The bartender said to the leather-jacketed youth, “Are you satisfied?”

  “There’s still not much of a head on that,” the boy answered.

  “Ah, for Christ’s sake, what do you want. It’s draught. And that’s what you ordered.”

  “How long have you been in this line of work?”

  The bartender’s puffy face scowled menacingly. “Longer than you’ve been in this fucking world! All right?”

  He leaned over towards his customer, who backed into me. The boy turned around, muttering an apology. The bartender, ignoring me, stalked to the other end of the bar and sat down facing the television.

  The boy stared. I looked back without recognition, or much interest. Then he said, “Jesus, it’s ...” He struggled for a moment. “Cathy!”

  “You’re right, but ... ” I was puzzled. The dark blond hair was familiar, as was the jacket. Something else popped into my mind. Pizzaland. Susie and Jeff. The Inter. Joe.

  “Joe!” I said with delight. “God, I remember now!”

  “How could you forget?” he joked. “Have a drink?”

  “Well... I was going to, but ...”

  “Let me get it.”

  He hailed the bartender, who began to walk over slowly, limping.

  “Why are you in this dump, anyway?” I asked.

  “Why are you?”

  “A gin and tonic, please,” I told the bartender, who repeated it sarcastically under his breath before stumbling away.

  “I think he’s drunk.”

  Joe sighed. “Yeah, or else he’s worked here for too long.” He paused. “To answer your question, a girl I used to go out with said she might show up here tonight. Just on the off-chance, I looked in.”

  “Oh.”

  As he handed me the drink I tried to remember what his face had been like two years ago. He hadn’t been handsome. Now he was, in a sort of pale almost Leslie Howard-esque sort of way. So someone else had got the girl, I thought, and he’s at a loose end.

  “What about you?” he asked.

  I gestured vaguely towards Carlotta’s table. “I came with a friend. It’s our last day
of school.”

  He nodded. “Yeah, it’s ours too. Feels funny, doesn’t it?”

  “A great relief.”

  “But it’s not over yet,” he said grimly.

  “Have you been working?”

  He shrugged. “Yeah, but I want to get into Physics at Trinity, so ...”

  I nodded.

  “What about you?”

  “Well, I’m leaving.” The words sounded false, as if I didn’t really believe it.

  “Really?” He seemed surprised.

  “I’m going to London this summer and hopefully I’ll stay.”

  “Not going to college?”

  “Oh, I just can’t face it at the moment. I want to get out.”

  I had finished my gin and tonic, gulping it down as I spoke.

  “I haven’t felt like that,” Joe said, “but I know a lot of people who do. Too many.”

  A bell rang, and the bartender said in a long-suffering voice, “Time, ladies and gentlemen, please.”

  “Oh no, it can’t be that late.” I looked at my watch.

  “I’ll run you home if you like,” Joe said. He had a nice voice, but what I liked best about him was that he didn’t make me feel in the least nervous.

  “I’ll go get my bag,” I told him.

  Carlotta and Jeanette were staring at me as I picked up my bag.

  “Found a friend?” Carlotta asked.

  “Yes,” I said. “I met him two years ago. We’ve decided to renew our acquaintance.”

  It felt good to say this.

  Jeanette gazed at me blankly, but said nothing. “Bye,” I said cheerfully, and turned my back on them. I would see them again in the exam hall.

  * * *

  When Joe had offered to give me a lift I don’t know what I had expected: a small car, perhaps. But it all came back to me as I watched him straddle a large motorbike, switch it on and rev it up.

  “You must have done well in the Inter!” I shouted.

  “Hop on,” he said. I stepped forward hesitantly, not sure I wanted to go through with this. But once I was on the bike and he had roared off, I quite naturally put my arms around him and rested my head against the smooth leather of his jacket. It felt nice. I closed my eyes. Whenever he stopped at traffic lights I opened them and we exchanged snatches of conversation. I learned that he no longer saw Jeff Blake, which made me wonder what kind of life Jeff had now. He’d been in none of my classes except Maths, and he’d hardly ever come to that.

  For some reason, Joe remembered the way to my house, which was just as well, because I didn’t feel able to give directions. I was tired, and also slightly confused. What was perplexing me was the fact that I was on the back of this boy’s bike, and that I had chosen to be here rather than stay on with Jeanette and Carlotta. Was this some lapse of loyalty on my part? It was some lapse, anyway; I wasn’t sure what it meant.

  Joe was simply being kind. As we neared the house I wondered at this strange generosity men sometimes displayed. Perhaps they liked occasionally helping women out, not for any manipulative reason, but just out of the goodness of their hearts. Or maybe it gave them a feeling of power. I remembered a day when I was trying to fix the chain on my bike and a man passed by, stopped, knelt down, locked the chain in place, and walked off without a word, wiping the grease from his hands. A woman wouldn’t have done that for me.

  Of course, I’d expected nothing from men. I’d always distrusted them. They were supposed to betray you and make you miserable. I’d tried to avoid that. But it had happened, and I couldn’t blame men. Now I would distrust women; that was Jeanette’s legacy.

  The bike screeched to a halt, no doubt waking my parents up. I climbed off, wishing I was drunker, or that I had something to say to Joe besides thank you.

  To my surprise, he stepped down.

  “I can’t ask you in,” I said in a low voice. “Otherwise I would. I’m really grateful. This is a good bit out of your way.”

  “I’m glad I could do this for you,” Joe said. “I’m really happy to have met you again. I feel embarrassed about the other time.”

  “Well, I’m the one who should feel embarrassed. I had no idea how to behave. I know I was quite standoffish.”

  He laughed. “I don’t blame you. I mean, I was so shy. I hadn’t a clue what to say.”

  “Oh, you were fine. I hadn’t a clue. I just really didn’t want to be there and I made that very clear. I’m sorry. I hope you weren’t hurt.”

  He shrugged. “No, and anyway I could see you weren’t deliberately trying to hurt me, the way some girls do. You’d probably never been out with a guy before.”

  “And I never have since,” I muttered.

  That seemed to be the last word. I unlatched the front gate. Joe suddenly moved forward and took my hand. I felt startled and rather annoyed. The unpredictability of the evening, the grimness of everything with the Leaving coming up, had all begun to weigh on my mind. I just wanted to go in and rest.

  “What are you doing?” I asked. “I have to go in.”

  “Listen, Cathy, “ he said, “I know I don’t have the right to ask anything of you, but I really enjoyed talking to you tonight. Is there any chance I could see you again? We could do things right the second time around.”

  “Don’t make me do this again, Joe,” I said wearily. “I like you, you’re really nice, but the Leaving’s almost here and I’m getting over something myself at the moment. I can see you need someone, but I don’t. So let’s just leave it at that.”

  “OK,” he said rather miserably. We stood looking at each other. He leaned forward and kissed me on the cheek. I smiled. He put his arms around me and we hugged. I pressed against him for a moment, because he was warm and nice, and I couldn’t believe that it would feel this good to be held.

  Then our lips brushed together. He began to kiss me. I wanted to feel something. I hoped I would. But at first there was just an emptiness and then I began to analyze the sensation. It was as if a glass wall had dropped between Joe and me. I was going through the motions, but felt nothing. I wondered if it was pleasurable for him. How could it be? I thought. We were swapping spit, our tongues were in each other’s mouths, and yet I had to fight the mounting urge to push him away.

  He released me. I stepped back, then, quite calmly, I opened the gate, stepped through, and closed it with a click. Joe and I stood on either side. He moved a pace back, towards his bike, towards escape.

  “Goodbye, Joe,” I said, clearing my throat.

  “I’m sorry,” he said simply. “I shouldn’t have.”

  There was a long pause.

  “Good luck with your Leaving,” I said finally.

  “Same to you.” He got on his bike, put his crash helmet on, and pressed the pedal down savagely. The machine leapt into life and roared off down the road.

  Chapter 14

  In the house, there seemed only one thing to do. I walked into the dining-room, where my parents kept their drinks cabinet. I pushed open the door and fingered the bottles, caressing them almost. I had never got drunk by myself; although it had occurred to me I’d felt that it would be humiliating, an indication that I’d given in. A sort of moral collapse. I saw alcohol as a last resort.

  Of course, I was not completely sober. But I was shaken, and afraid. The conviction had come to me during those minutes with Joe that I was fated to be totally alone for the rest of my life. I wasn’t attracted to men, or only fleetingly, not enough to be able to hack it in the straight world. And I foresaw that I would repeat the same mistakes I’d made with Jeanette, over and over. Nobody would ever want me. I’d always be the one who got rejected, ultimately. Or left. So I might as well write off women too.

  I sloshed some whiskey into a glass and gulped it down. My eyes burned and watered as I knelt on the frayed carpet in front of the cabinet. The house was so quiet I could hear the fridge humming in the kitchen. I knew somehow that I wouldn’t be caught. It would be almost a relief to be. Mum and Dad had been so cold la
tely ... as if they thought I’d got away with something, when it was Stevie who had, as always.

  I slumped down at the table, the shiny fake mahogany dining-room table that we hardly ever used. As I sipped the whiskey my teeth clinked against the glass. I imagined biting into it, suddenly spraying the table with blood. Or else I could take a knife and scratch something obscene on this glossy surface. What could it be? “Your son is a queer.” I laughed quietly to myself.

  A loud bump startled me. It was from my parents’ bedroom, above me. Then I heard my father’s voice, loud and deep, angry it seemed:

  “Did Cathy come in?”

  “No,” my mother said. I could barely hear her. “I don’t think so. Is there something wrong?”

  “I can’t sleep,” I heard my father grunt.

  It made me uneasy to hear them. It was strange that they didn’t know I was in. I got up and stood irresolutely by the table, listening.

  “What’s wrong, Patrick?”

  “You know what’s wrong.”

  “No, I don’t.”

  There was a silence. I could hear the bed creaking as my father presumably tossed and turned. There were a few muttered words. I began to turn away.

  “It’s coming in and finding you like that.”

  “I know, I didn’t explain.” My mother’s voice was hurried and she sounded out of breath. “I didn’t think you’d be interested in seeing him, and I wanted some time with him by myself. Patricia was shopping and he came over for an hour or two. You know it’s been years...”

  “Yeah, I know it’s been years, but why?” Now he was almost shouting. I sat down. There was another long pause and I shivered suddenly.

  “Why what?” My mother said in a low voice.

  “What’s all this mystery? Look, I’ve never really asked you, but I’ve had my suspicions.”