At a Time Like This

by Catherine Dunne

  I felt the most tremendous burden lifting from around my heart. I grinned back at her, filling up with love. ‘You can bet on it,’ I said. ‘For ever. I won’t forget.’

  And I meant it.

  Later that year, I did move house and school, but Maggie and I never lost touch. I made the running. I felt it was the least I could do. My duty, my promise. Despite all the times I’d got her into trouble, when the tables were turned, her only instinct was to save my skin. And so, I feel responsible for her, for her wellbeing.

  How could I feel otherwise?

  7. Claire

  It has just come to me that next December, I’ll be the same age as my mother was when she abandoned us. I’ll be forty-four years old. Another birthday on the horizon and that makes me wonder how many more I’ll have. The thought depresses me. I don’t like thinking that I have a sell-by date ticking away somewhere inside me like yet another biological time bomb that’s waiting to explode.

  It’s strange, the way the four of us hardly ever talk about getting older. Sometimes I wonder if we’ve ever talked about the things that are important, particularly over the last few years. Well, Maggie and I have, of course. I trust her. But Georgie’s grown too cynical of late and Nora – well, Nora’s life is very different from mine. She means well, but she has become a little too smug for any of my confidences.

  I’ll never forget her compassion towards me. Maggie, that is. There are still days, all these years later, when I burn with shame over how I hurt her. I can plead all the reasons I like, make all the excuses I like, but what I did was still wrong. For once, I’m with Nora. And now my forty-fourth birthday is the final marker, I think. No more chances. That chapter of my life will finally be closed.

  Ray, of course, will be forty-five on the same day. That’s how everything started between us on that night. He insisted that he wanted us to celebrate our shared birthday together. I hate December and have hated it in triplicate ever since I was twelve years of age. For being the month I was born, for being the month of Christmas, for being the month my mother abandoned us. And, later on, for being the month when John Lennon died, but that’s a given.

  I had just been to the magazine’s annual Christmas party in the Conrad Hotel. It had been one of those awful nights of forced jollity when everyone had to turn up wearing their shiniest new outfit and their widest smile. I was not in the mood, particularly on that evening. But being the editor brought some social responsibilities with it, and the Christmas endurance test happened to be one of them. I did my duty, stayed till ten o’clock and then slipped away. By then, the party was beginning to get a bit raucous. It was time to go home and I hoped that nobody had noticed me leave. I made my way down the stairs. I’ve always avoided the lift on these occasions because I hate being forced to share a cramped space with someone who might be a little too full of Christmas spirit.

  ‘Claire!’

  I heard a man’s voice, familiar, but out of context. I half-turned, expecting to see some journalist or other running after me and insisting that I come back and rejoin the party. Or worse, someone from the office with a complaint and enough alcohol on board to have the courage to voice it.

  ‘I thought it was you!’

  It took me a moment. ‘Ray!’ I was relieved.

  ‘What are you doing in this neck of the woods?’ He was beaming.

  ‘Christmas party. Upstairs. But I’m sneaking away early’

  He leaned towards me, and his expression was conspiratorial. ‘Good idea,’ he said. ‘I promise I won’t tell. I’m sick of Christmas cheer myself and we’ve still got more than three weeks to go.’

  I smiled at that. He gestured towards the bar. ‘Listen, I’m just finishing up here. Let me grab my coat and I’ll walk out with you.’

  ‘No, please, it’s . . .’ But he was already gone. Part of me wanted to hurtle out the door, to rush off into the night and leave him standing there on his own. I really didn’t want his company, anybody’s company. Not on that night. I’ve wished so many times over the years that I’d obeyed that gut instinct.

  He was back almost at once. So quickly, in fact, that I wondered whether he’d been drinking alone. He seemed steady enough, but I knew from Maggie even back then that Ray had started drinking a lot more than was good for him.

  ‘Let’s go somewhere a bit quieter,’ he said then, and placed his hand under my elbow as he began to steer me out the door. I stopped at the top of the steps and turned to face him.

  ‘It’s Christmas, Ray, and it’s ten o’clock at night. There is nowhere quieter. Anyhow, I’m tired. I don’t mean to be rude, but all I want is a taxi to take me home.’

  ‘Guaranteed. I’ll put you into one myself. But first, a drink – just the one – given the time of year that’s in it.’

  I should have insisted. I should have pointed out all the contradictions he had already mentioned about the season and the burden of cheer it brought with it. But as I said, I was tired. Too tired even to argue. He brought us into a nearby pub that was much quieter than I expected. He winked at me.

  ‘See? Leave it to Ray. You can usually get a seat in here,’ he said. ‘It’s not trendy enough for the younger crowd and it’s too trendy for the oldies. Come on, let me take your coat.’

  I let him. I sat down.

  ‘Back in a mo’.’

  He disappeared at once towards the bar. I closed my eyes, trying to block out the events of the day. I wanted them to slip away from me. I went looking for forgetfulness in the dark. When I opened my eyes again, Ray was putting an ice bucket on the table. Inside, up to its neck in ice-cubes, was a bottle of champagne.

  ‘Ray!’ I said. ‘What on earth are you doing!’

  He eased the cork out of the bottle. The sound stilled the conversations at the bar for a moment and all heads turned in our direction. Then it started up again as though nothing much had happened.

  He grinned. ‘I think I remember that you and I have a significant date in common. Let’s celebrate that instead of Christmas. Seems like much more fun.’ He handed me a flute, half-filled with froth. ‘Here’s to birthdays. I’m a gentleman so I’ll just mention that I’m thirty-five on Thursday next and I know that you are a good deal younger. Cheers.’ And he raised his glass.

  I had to laugh at that. The bitterness of the sound was audible even to me. ‘Oh, yes – there’s all of a year between us.’

  ‘Come on,’ he urged. ‘Raise your glass. To shared birthdays.’

  What can I say? I raised my glass. And I raised it again and again and again.

  I don’t want to remember all the gory details. And ‘remember’ is not an accurate word anyhow. What remains of that night is burned on to my hard disk. It plays and replays with an accuracy that I can only describe as forensic, every time I let my guard down. I don’t need to try to recall all that happened. I need to make no effort at all. The details leap out of their own accord, each one tumbling after the other. A whole regiment of parachutists determined to capture enemy territory. They scorch their path into heart and soul as they go.

  Yes, I was tired, yes, I was lonely, yes, I was despondent. Yes and yes and yes again. It should have made no difference. Maggie was my friend, is my friend, and she was entitled to better, far better, from me. For more than two years afterwards, she wouldn’t speak to me. We four no longer met – at least, not as a group. Georgie and I used to, and I’d get a phone call from Nora fairly regularly. But I always dreaded her calls. I felt badly enough myself and Nora was too honest to pretend to feel other than she did, although she said her piece kindly enough. I avoided her because I needed no more reminders of the awfulness of what I had done.

  Then, one evening, Georgie manoeuvred the two of us together – Maggie and me, that is. I’ll always be grateful to her for that. I’m sure she did it more for Maggie’s sake than for mine, but that doesn’t matter. Either way, it was a kind and loyal thing to do and it remains one of the times that Georgie has surprised me the most. But, howeve
r grateful I might be to Georgie and the part she played, I still can’t get over Maggie’s generosity. Her tearful forgiveness was more than I deserved. Not only did she not judge me, she somehow found the will to be understanding. And afterwards, although I am still not quite sure how this happened, the four of us found a way back to our evenings again, and our friendships. I’m not saying that things were easy, or even as they had been before, but still, we were able to forge something out of the wreckage.

  That night with Ray I was seduced by something so simple, so unexpected that I’m amazed more men don’t know about it. It was kindness. No more and no less. Some time towards the end of the first bottle of champagne, I began to cry. I couldn’t help myself. I’ve never been any good at drinking. It either makes me paranoid or it makes me weep. Sometimes the two happen together, and that is not a pretty sight. But these were tears that should have waited, as usual, until I was in my bath, surrounded by the comforts of warm water, the scent of bath-oil and the privacy of my own home. Ray seemed unsurprised and unmoved by my tears. I wondered afterwards if he was used to seeing women cry, but such an uneasy thought seemed to be at odds with his behaviour. He patted my hand and hunched towards me so that the people standing behind him couldn’t see my distress. And no, I wasn’t crying over another man, at least not directly, not in the way that that implies.

  ‘What is it, Claire?’ His voice was quiet. It seemed full of concern. I know that Ray has been unfaithful to Maggie several times over the years. I even knew it then. But all I saw on that evening, at least up to that point, was friendship. And so I told him. About my treatments. My failures. My longings.

  ‘I’ve given up on men,’ I said, sobbing into the handkerchief he handed me. ‘Really’ It was true. I’d been with John for just over a year, but we were never going to be long-term together and we both knew it. I hadn’t even told him about the hospital treatments. I was terrified that he might take fright and bolt when I needed him most. Dishonest? That’s for sure. Make a man a father and then abandon him? I admit it. It was not my finest hour.

  For just that moment, it was a relief to talk to Ray, to talk to anyone who would listen without having to pretend any more. ‘I don’t expect a relationship. I’m not even looking for one. All I want is a baby. And after today, I can’t even have that.’

  Ray said nothing. He just looked at me and waited for me to stop crying. Finally, he said: ‘What happened today?’ But so quietly I could hardly hear him over the noise in the bar.

  I wiped my eyes, blew my nose and tried to get control of myself. ‘Six months ago,’ I told him, ‘I managed to persuade a doctor to give me fertility treatment. I’ve been trying to have a baby for three years and nothing’s happened. I was desperate.’

  Desperate? There isn’t a word in the English language that can approach how I felt. The initial excitement, the anticipation behind the popping of every Clomid, the taking of my temperature, the mechanics of sex on the right day, at the right hour. I kept myself alive with the oxygen of promise: the promise of a baby, of babies even, if the treatment was successful. And they kept on telling me just how successful it could be. Statistics swam behind the rosy spectacles of this hopeful mother, of the many hopeful mothers that shared all those afternoons in plush, carpeted rooms as we sat waiting for consultants to tell us our fate. We’d leaf through magazines, making polite conversation, pretending that we felt normal. As though we weren’t fuelled by an all-consuming rage that Mother Nature had abandoned us, had singled us out for a litany of losses before we had even begun. There was always the cruelty of hope to lure us on to the next stage. Beyond this medication, that medication and the other medication, there was always the tantalizing promise of IVF. We patients endured the constant drip-feed of optimism and expectation, the certainty of a take-home baby at the end of it all. Well, it hadn’t happened. At least not to me.

  Ray refilled my glass and I remember that I downed it in one gulp. ‘I pretended to be married, but the doctor knew. Anyhow, we went ahead with the treatment but this is the last cycle she’s prepared to prescribe. She told me so this afternoon.’ I shrugged. ‘So that’s that.’

  By then, I was feeling light-headed. It wasn’t a pleasant feeling. It was like the night of my first party with Maggie and Georgie in our flat in Rathmines when the dope had made me sick. The memory of that, of my friends and how they had looked after me, on that occasion and on others, propelled me all at once into standing. I looked at Ray and I remember feeling amazed, confused, just for an instant. It was as though I was seeing him for the first time. He was unfamiliar and distant. What on earth was I doing? Telling this man things I hadn’t even told my closest friends? What was I thinking? I finally began to feel the return of some sort of sanity, even though it was through a haze of champagne.

  ‘I have to go,’ I said. I remember that I stumbled, almost falling back into the chair again. I knew that my departure was abrupt, that my behaviour must appear to be very strange. But I couldn’t wait. All I knew was that I needed to be gone. I needed to be home.

  ‘Wait,’ he said, flinging out one arm to catch me. ‘You can’t go home alone, not like this. Let me take you.’

  ‘No,’ I protested. ‘I’ll be all right. I’m going to get a taxi.’

  ‘I’m coming with you,’ he said. ‘It’s the party season. Taxis’ll be thin on the ground at this hour. And you’re a little . . . the worse for wear.’

  The worse for wear. That brought me back – back to Paul, to the night we met. I didn’t want to remember how I had lost him, how I had driven away the one man I did love and still do, for better and for worse.

  Ray steadied me then and helped me into my coat. He put one arm around my shoulders and opened the door of the pub. Unfortunately, we got a taxi immediately. I say ‘unfortunately’ because maybe if I had had to stand and queue for longer in the freezing December air of Dublin, I might have sobered up more than I did. I’m not trying to make excuses. I did what I did and I am responsible for it and no one else is to blame. But it might have meant that I’d have resisted with more conviction when Ray pulled me towards him and kissed me. It might have meant that I’d have sent him packing instead of handing him my key when the taxi pulled up outside my house. It might have meant that I would not have allowed him to open my front door and bundle me inside.

  What is there left to tell? How can I bear to remember the ordinary, sordid tale of betrayal that played itself out on my living-room sofa that night. How can I ever forget. Did I think of Maggie? No, I did not. I thought only of sperm and egg. I was driven by all the longings of thwarted motherhood. It was a madness, I no longer have any doubt about that. It was a compulsion, a yearning that refused to be denied. It has made me understand the force of addiction, that lunacy of desire that demands to be fulfilled or else it will kill you in the attempt. The end result, the possibility of a baby, was all I thought about, both that time and the next.

  And that’s what Maggie understood on that evening when Georgie finally brought us together after more than two years of silence. Years that had been filled by the yawning absences that betrayal brings in its wake. I think Maggie found all that grief easier to accept, finally, than love or lust. Maybe it didn’t seem to be quite as big a betrayal in her eyes. At least, not on my part, anyhow. She never discussed what she felt about Ray, not with me. That night in Georgie’s after we had spoken, she took my hand in hers. The gesture moved me so much that I broke down. So did she.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Claire, so very sorry about everything. God, life is a real mess, sometimes. And yes, of course I want to forgive you.’ She rummaged for tissues in her sleeve and handed me one. ‘I knew nothing . . . I didn’t realize . . . you’d been trying for so long. It never occurred to me. It’s terrible, the whole thing is just terrible.’

  I couldn’t speak. I continued to sob as she stroked my hand. She never once mentioned the awful outcome that that evening might have had, never once alluded to how there might have been a c
hild, her husband’s child. I will never forget the depths of my own shame as she held both of my hands in hers.

  ‘We’ll talk about it again,’ she sighed. ‘Don’t break your heart over it. We’ll work our way through it somehow, you and I.’

  And then Georgie came back into the room and we stopped our conversation. But we did meet again. I was glad to meet her on my own, happy that she had wanted to ask it of me. I felt that I owed her many things, among them the courtesy of a full explanation, long overdue.

  There was more, much more that I still needed to tell her. It’s almost impossible to believe that the four of us have spent so many years orbiting each other’s lives. Sometimes the gravitational forces pull us together, other times they force us apart. I suppose we’ve never been as close as the time when we were all students together. But in reality, that time lasted only a year. It’s strange, it now seems to be much longer than that. Perhaps because we all lived that year with such intensity. Once the weddings started, though, the friendships all started to shift and change. At least, that’s how I remember it.

  Nora and Frank were the first of our group to get married. Pete and Georgie followed after a gap of some six years, after what I once described as a whirlwind romance, but Georgie disagreed with my characterization. In fact, she got very cross.

  ‘It may be sudden, Claire, but this is nothing as trivial as romance. This is a relationship. It’s time for me to settle down.’

  I didn’t comment. After all, how could I? I was the last person qualified to judge the love affairs of others, particularly those belonging to my friends. But I do remember wondering how she could be so calculating about it.

  After the dizzy heights of Pete and Georgie, next came Maggie and Ray, just six months later. I’ve often felt sorry for Maggie on that score. But not as sorry as I used to feel for myself. All of these weddings in their different ways reinforced my singleness. I had to learn to be detached from them, to treat them almost as professional occasions. Nora and Frank’s nuptials had already put paid to any future that Paul and I might have had – not that they were to blame, of course they weren’t. The deed just happened to be done and dusted on their particular day. The weddings that came next simply repeated the point in case I hadn’t got it the first time around.