At a Time Like This

by Catherine Dunne

  She nodded, satisfied. ‘And here’s the last part of the deal, Maggie.’

  I turned, my hand just reaching out to open the door.

  ‘This is strictly between you and Claire. I don’t need to know, I don’t want to know. And Nora’ll never know tonight happened, not from me.’

  I didn’t answer. My eyes filled and my throat felt hard and dry, as though it was choking on small stones. I opened the living room door and went in to Claire.

  I think that she, Claire and I, now share an understanding that has made our friendship deeper, despite the secrets between us. We can trust each other.

  I remember the night in O’Neill’s when she and Georgie and I met for the first time. I’ve never told her this, but I arrived with every intention of freezing Claire out. When Georgie told me about her, I was immediately jealous. I remember that I warned Claire off that night, by telling her what good friends Georgie and I had been ever since we were kids. And then, to be honest, I backed off. My heart wasn’t in it. Claire was so lovely and so open and so vulnerable that I felt ashamed of myself. I made it up to her afterwards, but I don’t think she knew. Claire never sees badness in anyone. She’s far too trusting, and that’s what has got her into so much emotional hot water over the years.

  Anthony will be back this afternoon. I called him about the leaking outside tap and he promised to stop by on his way to Sligo. His elder daughter has just had a new baby and he’s off to see his latest grandchild – a little girl after two boys. I was embarrassed about having phoned when he told me. I didn’t know what to say first.

  Anthony, that’s wonderful news! Congratulations! And please, don’t even think of calling here on your way. The tap is not important, it’ll do next week or the week after. Any time you happen to be passing.’

  ‘No, no,’ he said. ‘I have to pass your door anyway. It’ll only take a few minutes to fix. Besides, visiting hour doesn’t start till seven. I’ll have plenty of time.’

  There was no point in arguing.

  I have promised Ray that I will not leave him. At least, not in the way that people generally do. I remember the panic in his eyes when I sat him down three months ago and told him that I had had enough. He looked stricken, that’s the only word for it.

  ‘Don’t go,’ he said, ‘please don’t,’ before I had even begun to say what I wanted to say. I had rehearsed the words so often that I was confident I wouldn’t be deflected this time, that I would be able to keep on repeating my central message over and over again until he’d have no choice but to hear me.

  ‘I’m not leaving, Ray, because I don’t want that kind of upheaval in my life. But I am tired of living like this and I am going to make some changes. And the changes do not include you.’ There, I had said it and the sky hadn’t fallen. ‘I am tired of giving you chances and tired of you breaking your promises.’ He opened his mouth, about to say the words I had heard too often before, about how this time it would be different. ‘Please don’t say anything. Hear me out.’ He lit a cigarette for both of us. ‘I am not asking you to do anything, say anything or make any promises that you won’t keep. This is about me and my life. I’ll continue to live here during the week most weeks, but I’ll be gone at the weekends. Every weekend and you will not be joining me.’

  ‘But what do you expect me do?’ He said it quietly, his tone more bewildered than sad, and I almost weakened again.

  ‘Whatever you choose,’ said my rehearsed script. ‘You have your golf and your football.’ Now stop, said my script adviser, her voice stern. Stop handing him solutions. Let him work it out for himself.

  ‘Is there someone else?’

  I looked at him, right in the eye. ‘ You are asking me that?’ His face flushed. ‘You have no right to ask me that, no right at all. But if it makes you feel better, no, there is no one else, and I’m telling the truth.’

  ‘Where will you be going?’

  I didn’t answer that one. Instead, I said: ‘We can continue to do all the parent stuff together, Christmas, birthdays, whatever we decide. We can still be Mr and Mrs O’Grady to the outside world. But I can’t be your wife in the way I have been for the past twenty years. I just can’t do it any longer. I don’t hate you, Ray, I’m just tired of being hurt.’

  ‘They never meant anything to me, you know, not any of them.’

  I knew I had to hold on to my temper, or all could still be lost. The time for anger had gone. Anger brought tears and fighting and promises and sex and reconciliation. Anger is brother to love in so many ways. It had sucked me back in before, purged my rage and shame and disappointment and then propelled me into the arms of this man that I still loved despite myself. I couldn’t do it again.

  ‘Do you think that makes it better, that they meant nothing to you? They meant a whole lot to me. They meant lies and deceit and promises made to be broken. That’s what they meant.’

  He looked at me as he spoke, his eyes sincere, his voice full of love. It was what I had fallen for before, over and over again, so I knew the drill. ‘There hasn’t been anyone, Maggie, not for the longest time.’

  ‘Don’t lie to me, Ray. Do not insult me by lying to me.’ I stood up. ‘Not only are you seeing somebody, you have been for several months. I even know her name. You should be more careful of what you leave in your shirt when you put it in the laundry basket.’

  What a tired old cliché, I remember thinking, even at the time I found it. Letters and credit card slips: weren’t these the usual shoddy ways that people found out about their cheating spouses?

  I was ready for what was coming. I had already predicted Ray’s reply and some detached part of me was interested to know if, after all these years, I’d finally get it right. I waited to see what he’d say next, how he’d try to put me in the wrong or, at the very least, doubt myself.

  He looked incredulous. ‘You read a letter written to me?

  I had to laugh. ‘You have no idea how predictable you are.’

  Then he got angry. ‘I don’t want your terms and conditions,’

  he said. ‘Nobody dictates to me what I can and can’t do in my own home.’

  I picked up my cigarettes and my lighter. This was where the script ended, where ‘exit stage right’ was written at the bottom of my page. Pursued by a bear. ‘Then you have decisions to make. We’re all responsible for our own lives. I’ve made my decisions, now you make yours.’

  And I left. My weekend bag was already packed and in the car. I don’t remember the journey to Coillte, I just remember pulling up outside the cottage and being puzzled as to how I’d got there. I stayed in bed for the entire weekend. I shivered so much my muscles ached and my teeth chattered and there was no possibility of sleep. No matter how much I blasted the rooms with central heating, I still couldn’t get warm. Finally, on the Sunday night I called Georgie.

  ‘Where are you?’ she said. ‘I’ve been trying your mobile all weekend.’

  ‘I switched it off I said. ‘I’m at the cottage.’ And I couldn’t say any more.

  ‘Something bad has happened. Tell me.’

  ‘Ray . . .’ I began, and then I broke.

  ‘Stay where you are,’ she said. ‘Stay right where you are. I’m on my way’ And she hung up. I should have protested and said no, no, that’s daft, it’s a two and a half hour journey in the dark, the roads are icy, I’ll be fine, just having a bit of a bad time, that’s all. But I didn’t say any of it. Because the truth was I wanted her with me. I needed her anger and the force of her convictions and her presence, more than anything else her presence, unequivocally in my corner. And that’s what I got.

  Are you leaving him?’ she demanded, before she even had her coat off. She was hugging me in the tiny hallway and I was weeping into her collar. Are you making the break this time?’

  I sobbed and choked and hiccuped my way through my script. She bundled me into the kitchen and put on the kettle. ‘Have you eaten at all today?’

  I shook my head and wiped my eyes wi
th the wad of kitchen towel she handed me.

  ‘I’m going to make us some food,’ she said. ‘Now, start again and tell me everything, right from the beginning.’ She took off her sweater and grinned at me. ‘Jesus, Maggie, it’s like the orchid house in here. At least you know your heating is working.’

  She stayed with me that night and the next. I heard her ring Karen and ask her to bring Dee, her daughter, into the shop for a few days. She said that something had come up and that we, she and I, needed time out to fix things. Then she rang Pete and said more or less the same thing. It was a brief conversation.

  ‘You are doing what is right for you, Maggie. I don’t know how you put up with it for all these years. It’s time you had a break, maybe even a bit of fun.’

  We were sitting in the living room, the fire lit, the curtains pulled against the bleakness of February. I felt exhausted. All of my energy seemed to have drained away, leaving my body listless and my mind blank.

  ‘Fun?’ I echoed. I shook my head. ‘I just want a bit of peace,’ I said. ‘I’m tired of being tormented.’

  ‘We all have our breaking points,’ she said. ‘Yours took longer than most. And that’s because you’ve got great integrity, Maggie. I admire you.’

  I remember I looked at her in surprise. Georgie was the woman of action, for the most part, not one for words, especially words about feelings. Maybe she was trying to tell me something. Maybe I stole her thunder that weekend in the same way that she stole Nora’s on the night of Claire’s party. Whatever it was, I’m sorry I missed the opportunity.

  I don’t care why Georgie left. I mean, I don’t need her to give me any explanation or any excuses or anything at all except the truth. Her letter said that she’d be in touch again, when the time was right. I can trust her that she will. Until then, I have the business to keep me occupied, my children – or rather, my young adults – and this, my haven and my heaven, no matter what the colour. I can wait until she’s ready.

  And now I hear Anthony’s car outside. He’ll fix the tap and we’ll talk and I’ll ask about his granddaughter. Then, I’ll make him a cup of tea and we’ll sit together in my tiny kitchen. When he goes, I’ll light the fire and read my book.

  It’s enough for now. I’m content.

  Epilogue

  Georgie

  When I said the other night that I’d had no more nightmares, that is perhaps not strictly true. I had nothing as terrifying as the previous night’s crashing aeroplane and salty drowning, but nevertheless, my sleep was disturbed.

  I haven’t thought about Danny Power in well over twenty years: I have no idea why his face visited me so clearly in the small hours of this morning. Perhaps when you leave one life for another, you have to revisit all the old significances before you can finally let them go. And maybe Danny has more to do with now than I’d like to think. Whatever the reason for his guest appearance the other night, I welcomed him. I even felt some sadness at the way in which I had cut him loose. I surprise myself these days with a new honesty. I no longer flinch from the truth about myself, now that I can leave that self behind.

  Danny. Now there was an exciting lover for a young woman. He had that edge of danger, coupled with a confidence in his own attractiveness that made him irresistible. I can still see the look on Claire’s face the first time she saw him. She couldn’t take her eyes off him – it was as though she recognized something in him, a type of kindred soul. Luckily, she met Paul very soon afterwards, otherwise there might have been trouble.

  Oh, I have to say that Danny adored me. There’s no doubt about that. But I think that beautiful people are narcissistic. They are drawn to their own likeness. I may have been striking, elegant, confident – all words used to describe me at different times – but I was never beautiful. Claire, on the other hand, could stop traffic. How could I have trusted Danny to resist had Claire turned her blue gaze upon him? Particularly given the amounts of dope he was smoking back then. I doubt that his moral standards would have been firm enough to repel that sort of temptation.

  Ironically, it was Nora’s wedding that made me realize for the first time that Danny was not going to be any good as a long-term prospect. I look at the words I have just written and I wonder was I really that calculating? I must have been. Because although Danny and I stayed together – albeit off and on – for another three years or so, I had already decided that my future lay elsewhere, that it had to lie elsewhere. I liked having him in my bed, enjoyed the fact that he was with me, loved the way that we made an arresting couple. What I did not like was the nebulous half-life of drugs and alcohol that he lived when he was not with me. But I bided my time, then as now. I didn’t want to be on my own, not until I was sure that I was ready. I knew the time had come when I discovered that he was using me to finance his bad habits.

  Poor, dim Danny. I don’t think that he ever realized the fact that he had become a liability, and I’m not referring to his one foray into thieving. I don’t think it ever occurred to him that what Georgie the student found delightfully irresponsible, exhilarating and fun, the twenty-something woman would begin to find tiresome. How could I possibly appear with Danny beside me anywhere other than that casual universe of college, inhabited by the terminally young? Danny had no gravitas, no purpose, no control over his future – or indeed, his present as it then was. That was not what I wanted, not what I was planning for myself. He was heartbroken when I told him that things were over between us.

  ‘What do you mean, over?’ His blue eyes were filled with injured incomprehension. I watched as he tried to struggle towards understanding, to make connections through the fog.

  ‘We’re not going anywhere, Danny, and I think you realize it, too.’ I remember I tapped my pen impatiently on the table in front of me. We’d met at his pleading, in a restaurant of my choosing. I’d just signed the credit card slip, a signal that the meal was over. He who pays the piper calls the tune. I had decided not to mention the hundred pounds he had taken from the hidden drawer in my jewellery box.

  One of those impossible arguments followed. The sort of arguments that have no resolution. He claimed that the dope, the cocaine, the ecstasy were all part of a passing phase. He could give them up, no problem, just like that. He even snapped his fingers to show me how easily he would adapt to their absence. He didn’t need them. He just liked them, that was all: but he wasn’t an addict, definitely not. All he needed was one more chance to show me.

  I shook my head. ‘It’s too late,’ I told him. ‘Anyway, there’s no point in doing it for me. You have to do it because you want to, for yourself I watched him wrestle with that. He tried hard to find a path that would convince both me and himself of his ability to change, even though he felt there was no real need to: he had things under control already. Whatever way he turned, he hanged himself. The irony of it is, perhaps, that a different woman – someone kinder than I, for example – might have stuck it out, supported her man, aided his recovery. But the truth was, I wasn’t interested. At that stage of my life, I was ambitious to move ahead and Danny didn’t fit the profile.

  My father would never have given me my first premises in Dalkey had Danny still been hanging around. He made that quite clear, the night I approached him with a business proposition that Claire had helped me with. I have to say, I was surprised. I would never have thought that my father would bother to notice anyone in my life.

  ‘Drop that young man of yours,’ he said, looking at me over the tops of his glasses. ‘He’ll do nothing but hold you back.’

  ‘It’s over,’ I said, angered by his knowledge, his presumption of parenthood after all the years of emotional absence. What I’d just told him wasn’t strictly true, either: I had made my decision, but I still hadn’t let Danny know his fate. He was ignorant of our split, on the night I spoke to my father. Or rather, on the night he spoke to me. Nevertheless, it was the unexpectedness of my father’s assault that catapulted me towards explanation when I otherwise might have chosen an
injured but dignified silence.

  My father continued to look at me. ‘Your mother and I don’t like what this Danny represents,’ he said. He uttered his name as though it were some form of swear-word: ugly, contaminating. ‘And while that might be a matter of some indifference to you now, believe me, our disapproval will soon become significant.’

  I remember the threat implicit in his words. Yes, Danny was history and needed to be told, for all the reasons I was already convinced of. Nevertheless, I was angered by the sound of his name in my father’s mouth: but not angry enough to challenge him. He hadn’t cared about me all that much since I was a teenager, now he was putting his oar in where it was least needed. But I swallowed my rage, and was conscious of doing so deliberately. I needed something from him, and was cynical enough to play his game. ‘I said, it’s over,’ I repeated and met his gaze. Finally, he nodded. He pushed my folder towards me, across the squat, ugly, mahogany desk in his office.

  ‘I like this,’ he said, ‘and I like your friend Claire’s idea for the interior. That girl has a head on her shoulders.’ He paused while he lit a cigarette. ‘I’ll finance this for you. You can manage it, stock it and work in it for the next three years. Then, we’ll review it and see how things stand. You’ve got till you’re twenty-five to prove yourself.’ He shrugged. ‘Don’t know why I spent all that money on an English degree when all you want to do these days is sell clothes. You could have started four years ago, be ahead of the game now.’ I said nothing. I felt a kind of savage gladness that he didn’t know. Right then, I loved the gulf between us.

  ‘Make a success of it,’ he was saying, ‘and you can expand, sell on, do whatever you like.’ He stood up, a signal that our meeting was now over. ‘For now, I’ll own a twenty-five per cent share. We can discuss that in a year’s time. If you’ve any sense, you’ll take the minimum salary and plough money back into the company’

  I took the folder off the desk and shoved it into my briefcase. It was a far better deal than I could have hoped for, but I wasn’t going to tell him that. Besides, I was filled with fury at his casual dismissal of me. It’s been a useful emotion, over the years. Fury lights a fire, fuels a momentum that might otherwise burn itself out. ‘Fine,’ I said, any thanks I might have felt strangled at the base of my throat, killed by his coldness and my old, old resentment of having to ask him for anything, even to acknowledge my existence.