At a Time Like This

by Catherine Dunne

  Tamla Motown, now that was my kind of stuff. Stevie Wonder, Martha Reeves and the Vandellas, Otis Redding. Jimmy Ruffin crying over broken hearts, Diana Ross yearning after lost love, Marvin Gaye and Tammi Terrell singing their hearts out about high mountains and low valleys and rivers that weren’t wide enough. About there being nothing like true love, baby – hours and hours of doom and betrayal and misery. My brother Paul never stopped teasing me about my taste in music. But I’ve often asked myself, over the years, if something inside me knew. I mean, if there was some instinct already there, at work, making sure that I was prepared for the life that ended up being mine. I like that kind of speculation, particularly at a time like this, when it doesn’t matter any more.

  My college years were not where I shone the brightest. I managed only a pass degree, and my parents were a bit sniffy about that, but it didn’t bother me. On the day I met Nora, I couldn’t have cared less about Mademoiselle Ondart and her corner on disapproval. You know the type. Tiny and neat and full of Parisian superiorities. But it was obvious that Nora felt differently. I would have been just as happy to go and have a fag and a coffee in the Buttery, but she was already walking towards the door of the seminar room. She was determined to have what she felt she was entitled to.

  ‘Let’s go in together,’ she urged. ‘I’ll apologize for both of us. Okay?’

  ‘Okay’ Whatever. I followed her inside and we took the first available chairs. Unfortunately, they were the ones closest to Mademoiselle herself, so we had to walk the whole length of the room under her irritated gaze. She was just getting into her stride, with her photocopies from Le Monde. She waved at us, her ringed and braceleted hand saying: ‘Just get on with it, girls.’

  Nora’s spoken French wasn’t bad and she told me after the seminar that she’d gone to France for a couple of months once she finished her Leaving Cert. Then she’d gone on to work in London. Both of these things seemed exotic to me at the time. I’d never lived anywhere else but Killiney

  ‘So, where did you work when you lived in London?’ I was curious. Georgie and I were already thinking about the summer, doing a little bit of planning ahead. The idea of a few months in a big city like London appealed to us. That was assuming I passed my exams and didn’t have to come home early to repeat. But I knew that failure wasn’t an option. Not for me, particularly after the nuclear holocaust that had followed Paul’s Pre-Med exams. Although my parents had made no secret of the fact that they were happy to have got both of us, Paul and me, to the stage where they no longer had any responsibility for us, they still insisted on academic success. You might say that they held the door open for us as soon as they decently could, but we went through it on their terms.

  I don’t think that Paul ever wanted to be a doctor, but it was one way of getting our parents’ attention. I mean, he really needed them to notice him. And when he failed Pre-Med, he had more of their attention than he knew what to do with. Don’t they say that for some people, negative attention is better than none at all? That’s how Paul was back then, I’m convinced of it. As for me, I voted with my feet as soon as I was able. For as long as I can remember, I’d always wanted to be somewhere else, anywhere at all, as long as it was away from my parents, particularly my mother. I got very tired of always feeling in the way.

  I was a serious disappointment to the old pair, I know that. I was a bit of a wild teenager, I did my fair share of illegal substances, developed a Dublin accent, all the better to piss them off, and I hung around for a while with the sort of people that they didn’t like. I kept Georgie from them, too, as much as I could. They knew of her existence, all right; they approved of her and her family, and that was another reason for keeping them apart. Georgie was still living in Killiney back then. It was before her father’s transformation from ‘builder’ into ‘developer’ and her family’s move to Ballsbridge when she and I were both barely fifteen. She changed schools then and I missed her.

  From the time Georgie left the neighbourhood, I deliberately lived a ‘fuck you’ lifestyle. It was one way of putting distance between me and my parents, their gin and tonics, their bridge club, their almighty golf. Looking back, I was probably a bit inconsistent – not to mention a complete nightmare by the time I reached eighteen. I was happy enough to have them pay my fees for Trinity and give me my monthly allowance, though. I figured, well, they have it. So I might as well spend it.

  Anyway, I can remember that first conversation I had with Nora as though it was yesterday. I remember how I waited, dying to hear her reply and expecting to get loads of information about London. I wanted to hear about fashion, about places to see, things to do. But she just leafed through her notebook, as if she was looking for the right answer among all her neatly written tables of vocabulary and handy phrases.

  ‘Oh, I just worked in an office,’ she said. ‘I did some temping. It wasn’t terribly exciting, really’

  Now that was far too vague for me. ‘But London – what about London?’ I persisted. ‘Is it a great city to live in?’

  ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘If you like big cities. I don’t, not really’

  And that was the end of that. I got nothing else out of her, either, the next time I tried, so I got the message and gave up. It didn’t take long for me to find out that what had seemed like Nora’s grown-upness was, in fact, a sort of detached wariness that made her expect the worst from everyone. I don’t know why, but I was drawn to her vulnerability. She seemed more honest, more connected to reality than the rest of us. She spoke her mind, sometimes without thinking. There was something childlike about her, and she was kind. In those early days, she was also lonely and latched on to me, and by extension to Georgie and Claire. We didn’t mind, Claire and I, most of the time, but Georgie resented her from the word go.

  And that’s how Helly the Helicopter was born. Georgie christened her, said that Nora hovered about the three of us and made the space around us thrum. It was, she said, as though Nora sucked the oxygen from the air and the strength from our limbs. Eventually, the rest of us would give up, gasping, ashamed of ourselves, and invite her to wherever it was we happened to be going. There was an element of truth in all that Georgie said. But still. Nora needed us and neither Claire nor I had any intention of turning her away. Georgie had her own way in far too many other things for us to give in on that.

  She – Georgie – and I had a falling out over Nora once. It was the first serious row we’d ever had, and we’ve been glued together ever since we were four. We had our whole lives mapped out when we were fourteen. Share a flat, make the most of college, of freedom. Have wild parties and wilder boyfriends and maybe, eventually, each settle down somewhere close to the other.

  ‘What were you thinking about, for fuck’s sake?’ Georgie was incandescent.

  It was her birthday, right in the dog days of January. Now, I hadn’t quite invited Helly, not directly, but she had prised information out of me about what we three were up to at the weekend. I’d left the details as vague as I could and just said that Georgie would be the one doing the inviting. Her birthday, her guests, that kind of thing. But Helly turned up anyway, bringing a gift and flowers and wearing one of her brightest smiles.

  I’d never seen Georgie so angry. I knew I needed to apologize, and fast. ‘I’m sorry – but she did kinda invite herself. I just let slip that it was happening, right? We can’t tell her to go.’

  We were in Georgie’s bedroom. She had just slammed the door on the party in the living room. Her eyes blazed. ‘Like fuck we can’t.’

  I knew that she’d had a row with Danny – I’d heard her on the phone earlier – but she hadn’t told me that. I had to pretend not to know. Instead, she was trying to make me believe that her rage was entirely due to Helly. I let her have her moment.

  ‘I told you I didn’t want her here. Christ knows, I put up with her every other time, but not tonight, please, just not tonight.’

  Her temper reminded me of primary school, of the time when s
he’d got us both into trouble. We could only have been five or six at the time, just starting, I think, in Senior Infants. We were sat at the red table, and Mrs McCarthy had arranged eight of us small girls in a circle with piles of coloured art paper, scissors and gum placed in front of us. Melissa McKee had been put sitting between us and Georgie got really mad. She got up and marched across the classroom to where Mrs McCarthy was just starting to settle the next group of girls at the yellow table.

  She tugged at the astonished teacher’s sleeve. ‘Can me and Maggie sit together?’

  ‘Maggie and I,’ corrected Mrs McCarthy automatically, before she realized what was happening. ‘Georgina!’ she said, when she’d recovered. ‘Please do not leave your seat without permission. Now sit down and I’ll be over to you in a moment, once everybody here has what they need.’

  But Georgie stood her ground. As patiently as any adult, she repeated her request. This time she added a ‘please’. Mrs McCarthy was matronly, slow to anger most days, but Georgie must have hit a nerve. ‘Georgina,’ she began. But she never got to finish.

  ‘Maggie and me need to sit together because Melissa McKee . . . smells . . . of . . . wee.’ Clear as a bell. She’d even paused between each of the final words, so that they sounded more dramatic.

  There was silence, followed by some nervous titters from the yellow table. Then all hell broke loose. Mrs McCarthy shouted at Georgie, Melissa burst into tears and Georgie refused to sit down. The upshot was that we were both sent to the Principal’s office – a bit unfairly, I’ve always thought, because I’d had no idea that Georgie was going to include me in her rant. Although we had both agreed the day before that Melissa McKee did, indeed, smell of wee.

  I think we each had to write a letter of apology to Melissa. How cruel children can be to each other. And it was that cruelty I remembered as Georgie stood there in her bedroom, now an eighteen-year-old woman, but basically doing exactly the same thing all over again. The memory of Melissa’s pain was keen and I was not going to humiliate Helly She didn’t deserve it. I banked on the fact that Georgie’s angers were usually short-lived.

  ‘Remember Melissa McKee?’ I said to her. ‘You got me a week’s double spellings for that caper. Remember? And extra tables! Now it’s payback time, right?’

  I watched as Georgie tried to puzzle it out. I let her. And I enjoyed the moment, I must admit. Her face cleared and then she cracked up. ‘Melissa McKee! I haven’t thought of her in years! She smelt of wee!’

  Soon we were clutching each other, helpless with laughter. Claire knocked on the door and called out ‘Hurry up, both of ye – people are arriving and I can hardly say ye’re off havin’ a row.’

  Georgie wiped away the tears, still erupting into hysterics every time she thought of poor little Melissa.

  ‘All right, just this once. The Helicopter stays. But no more Melissa McKee, okay?’

  ‘You have my solemn word,’ I told her. ‘The debt is now paid.’ Still giggling, we joined the party. And Georgie got over it.

  That’s how our friendship has always been, right from the very beginning. Barter, blackmail from time to time, a bit of cajoling when necessary – usually done by me. In return, I got the most generous friend, the most loyal, the fiercest defender of my corner that I have ever had. And given who I married, I’ve needed it. I have so many reasons to be thankful for Georgie’s friendship.

  It’s strange, but there’s one occasion that I keep coming back to and yet it wasn’t all that important, not in the scheme of things. I mean, there are lots of more significant events that we’ve shared, she and I, if you were looking in from the outside. But this one time with Ray sums up the way Georgie looked out for me. It’s what the Trinity lecturers would call ‘emblematic’, I think. Anyway, I was heavily pregnant with Gillian at the time and Eve was only thirteen months old. I was constantly tired. Maybe weary is a better word. Whatever. All I know is, I wasn’t able to get up off the sofa. I felt as though my bones were melting and the only thing I wanted to do was sleep.

  Ray was not the greatest of husbands when I was pregnant. To be honest, he wasn’t the greatest of husbands when I wasn’t pregnant, either, but it’s amazing the things you can learn to live with when you have to. On the evening in question, I knew that Ray would be late home. He’d just been named ‘Salesman of the Year’ again, and there was, naturally, a celebration in the pub after work. Ray was one of those people who could sell sand to the Arabs, snow to the Eskimos. He was born to it. He’d rung me earlier in the day, cock-a-hoop, to tell me of his success. I was pleased for him, of course I was, but I was also uneasy. Ray was drinking up a storm in those days and with me pregnant, it was as though all the controls were off. And I no longer had the energy to fight him.

  ‘Don’t wait up, Doll,’ he said to me over the phone. That was his nickname for me whenever he was feeling particularly pleased with things. Not necessarily with me, just with things in general. ‘Have yourself an early night: expect me when you see me.’

  I tried to get a word in, tried to plead with him to go easy. I wasn’t asking for abstinence, or anything like that, just moderation. But he had already hung up. Ray always had the happy knack of knowing what I was going to say next.

  I have no clear idea of what happened as the evening wore on. I only have what Ray told me afterwards, because Georgie never volunteered anything about it. According to him, and he told me this in a tone that was half-amazed, half-enraged, Georgie had been in Searson’s with her cousin, Roberta – Bobbie – when Ray and his work buddies arrived at around six o’clock. At his insistence, she and Bobbie stayed to have a drink to celebrate his award and then they left to go to dinner. Georgie came back at around half-past ten, on her own. By that stage, my guess is that the party had thinned out a lot, but Ray would never admit that. He insisted that there were still four or five left from his department, that of course he couldn’t leave until they did. I said nothing. I just calculated the effect of four and a half hours of steady drinking on an empty stomach. Ray would have been feeling no pain by then, and the party would have been kept going by him. I’ve seen it all before, too many times. His rationalizations and I are old, if mistrustful, friends by now.

  I never asked who the other ‘four or five’ were, either. That was Ray’s careful way of not telling me that at least one of them was a woman. Whatever. According to himself, this is what happened next: the barman came over and tapped him on the shoulder.

  ‘Phone call for you in the bar, sir.’

  ‘Really?’ said Ray. He said he was surprised, although he can’t have been, not totally. Searson’s was a well-known drinking-haunt of his. He probably stumbled out to the phone, although that’s not how he tells it, and there stood Georgie. No phone call, just Georgie. I can imagine her expression, and I can also imagine my husband’s. Apparently, she got right to the point.

  ‘My car’s outside the door,’ said Georgie. ‘I’m giving you a lift home.’

  He said he told her he wasn’t ready. Then, according to him, she said, ‘Party’s over, Ray. We’re leaving now.’ There must be a bit in the middle that he hasn’t told me. Maybe he weighed up the options of throwing a strop in a public place against the impact of being seen leaving with a woman like Georgie. Maybe the barman refused to serve him. Whatever. The way Ray likes to tell it, he waved to the others and left. He might even have pretended to be amused. He gets like that when he’s been drinking: he either feels amused by everything or belligerent about everything. One way or the other, I suspect he was so shocked that he did what he was told.

  Do I imagine a barman grinning in the background? Work colleagues annoyed, or maybe relieved, that he left so abruptly and never went back? Maybe, maybe not. All I know is that I awoke to the sound of Ray’s key in the front door – he took a moment or two to get in – and the sight of Georgie’s tail-lights disappearing down the street just as I reached the porch.

  I rang her the next day. The least I wanted to do was acknowled
ge what she had done. And, of course, I was curious. But she gave nothing away when I thanked her.

  ‘Not at all,’ she said, with the ease of a practised liar. ‘I was going your way anyway and I could see that Ray needed a lift.’

  We never mentioned it again. We didn’t need to. I felt ashamed, grateful and sorrowful all at once. Georgie’s ferocious personality made me wonder, not for the first time, if she would have made a better man of Ray than I could. But as I’ve said, such speculation doesn’t really matter any more. What might or might not have happened is no longer of any relevance. And anyway, who has the responsibility of making a better man of Ray other than Ray himself?

  But back to Nora. Without Georgie, Nora relaxed and could be good company. Her warmth and willingness to please made up for so many other things, as far as Claire and I were concerned. Once Georgie was on the scene, though, it was an entirely different matter. Nora coiled into herself, became clingy and needy, like a spoilt child. She would appear before us, lumbering into our personal space over and over again with that uncertain look across her eyes. It made her look hunted. And it was that way she had of expecting to be unhappy that used to make Georgie mad as hell. It brought out the worst in her and made her cruel or, at the very least, dismissive.

  Claire would take her over then. If she hadn’t, I don’t think I would have, particularly once the birthday party incident had happened. I’d be able to feel my resistance weaken, but somehow I just couldn’t get my mouth around the words. Anyway, I knew that Claire would do it for me. And by staying silent, I showed my loyalty to Georgie and that pleased her. Cowardly, I know, but there you have it. Or maybe not so cowardly, after all. We are bound so closely together, she and I, in an endless tit for tat of ‘I look out for you, you look out for me.’ I’m not complaining, far from it. It’s something that has given me comfort, ever since I was old enough to recognize friendship for what it is.

  Claire would stand up, all brisk and business-like, and say something like: ‘Time we were going, lads: party time. Come on, Nora, we’ll get the beer.’ Then she’d wave towards Georgie and me. ‘Ye two go on ahead. We’ll catch up with ye later.’