Friends Like Us

by Siân O'Gorman

  Eilis knelt down and began digging again but stopped to wipe away her tears. But by lunchtime, normal Rob was back. He reappeared, showered, shaved, in clean shorts and T-shirt.

  ‘Sorry about earlier,’ he said, kissing her on the top of her head. ‘Just hung-over, you know…’

  ‘That’s okay…’ she smiled at him, relieved, trying to make the aberration a distant memory and move on to a better and more loving future, the way it was meant to be.

  ‘You look good,’ she said, noticing his T-shirt, slim cut, showing off the body he had developed since his fitness regime kicked off last year. He was a good-looking man, with a great body. Yet she couldn’t help thinking of Charlie. She felt a heat around Charlie that she had never felt with Rob, or for him. That was the difference. ‘You know, your muscles. That trainer is obviously good.’ She laughed, slightly awkwardly.

  ‘Thanks.’ He looked pleased. ‘Not too built up?’

  ‘You look good…’ She didn’t really know what to say so she changed the subject. ‘Would you like a Greek salad? I bought feta in the market, and some olives. Get us in the mood for the holiday?’

  ‘Sounds good to me.’ He put his hands around her waist. He hadn’t done this spontaneous display of affection for months… years even. They were an old unmarried couple, weren’t they? They were normal. ‘You smell nice…’ he nuzzled into her neck. But it felt forced and unnatural.

  ‘Just my new shower gel… coconut, I think.’

  But he stepped back, suddenly, as though recoiling. What was wrong? An undiagnosed nut allergy? Nuzzling aborted. ‘Everything okay?’ she asked, suddenly worried and embarrassed. ‘Anything wrong?’

  ‘Fine, fine,’ he said, smoothly, making her feel as though she had imagined his repulsion. ‘Greek salad sounds perfect.’ He began laying the table. ‘Have we got any oregano?’ He looked his usual self; unruffled, in control.

  ‘I’ll go and pick some.’ Eilis left the room and headed into the garden to her herb patch, glad for the fresh air. What the fuck was happening? Was she so repulsive? Why wasn’t he interested in her physically? She wasn’t unattractive, she knew that, she made an effort, she wasn’t hideous and Rob liked her, she knew that, he just didn’t want to sleep with her. Beside her, yes. With her, no. It was starting to make her feel that it was her fault, that it was something wrong with her. She couldn’t work it out and she couldn’t talk to him about it because in the past, every time she had tried to broach the physical side of their relationship, he had swept her concerns aside, reassured her she was beautiful and claimed tiredness, stress or getting old. He was thirty-eight for God’s sake. Look at Julio Iglesias. He was still going.

  What about Charlie. Was she repulsive to him – and all other men? But what was the point of wondering about Charlie, it was utterly impractical to think about him. She had to focus on her relationship with Rob, work on it… make it better. Charlie wasn’t going to help matters.

  But he might. He might help, her inner voice urged. He might, but you’ll probably never know.

  *

  Steph had returned from Rome, armed with a cushion for Eilis. It was soft and squishy and made from the softest wool. Eilis lifted off the tissue paper to reveal it. She held it to her face, rubbing it to her cheek, in her kitchen when Steph had called round for a cup of tea. ‘Heaven,’ she said. ‘Like a cloud.’ She hugged Steph. ‘Exactly what I wanted.’

  ‘I saw it and thought of you. Italian goat’s wool, apparently. I bought one for Melissa too, although she already has too many cushions. But you can never have enough, I suppose.’

  ‘Or, as Rob would say, one is too many. Where am I to hide it? Rob destroys anything comfortable.’ She meant it as a joke but she knew that Steph understood that there was more than an element of truth in what she was saying. You only had to look around Uncosy Cottage to see that cushions were verboten.

  ‘Could you keep it in a cupboard and only take it out when he’s not around?’

  ‘I’ll have to. I’ll push a wardrobe against the door of a secret room which is full of all my blankets and rugs and cushions. And a really nice armchair and posters of Morten Haarket.’

  ‘Sounds like my kind of room.’

  They laughed. ‘Sit down… I was going to say make yourself comfortable, but I realize that is impossible.’

  Steph looked around. ‘It’s really nice,’ said. ‘Very cool. I like the plywood finish. You don’t get that in ordinary kitchen shops.’

  ‘Rob sourced in in Stockholm,’ said Eilis. ‘It’s grown on me, I have to say. But I would like a dresser like you, Steph, one I could put jugs and plates on…’

  ‘And all the household letters and junk.’

  ‘Exactly,’ laughed Eilis, loving the idea of the fact that it was the little bits of clutter which made a home a home.

  She made tea – managing to find the remote control on top of the fridge – put some biscuits on a tray and the two sat at the kitchen table, Eilis on her new cushion.

  ‘I am comfortable,’ she said, ‘I am liking this strange feeling very much.’

  ‘Where’s Rob?’ asked Steph. ‘Working?’

  ‘Out, I think,’ said Eilis, who was thinking about how little she saw of Rob these days. They hadn’t spoken about what happened when they tried to touch and she hadn’t known what to say. Everything seemed fine on the surface but inside she had so many questions for him, about them, and either he wasn’t around for her to ask or she just felt too awkward to ask him outright about why he didn’t want to be intimate with her. ‘Out with friends. He didn’t really say where. He’s become quite sociable in his middle-age. I’m the opposite. I’m just going to have a quiet evening.’ She spoke brightly enough, as if his going out and being out was utterly fine with her. Which it was… usually… if he wasn’t so distant. She couldn’t put her finger on it, but there was a feeling that it was all going to come to a head soon.

  ‘Me too,’ said Steph. ‘I like Saturdays in on my own, I’ve decided. It’s like the whole world is out having fun and I’m doing something secret.’

  ‘Staying in?’ said Eilis. She noticed that Steph looked tired after the weekend, she could see it around her eyes and she looked as though she wasn’t quite present, as though her mind was elsewhere.

  ‘It’s the new going out.’

  ‘Well, let’s hope no one else will discover it or then we’ll have to go out.’

  ‘The new staying in?’ said Steph.

  They laughed.

  ‘And…’ Eilis wondered how to broach the subject. ‘How was Rome?’

  ‘Lovely, I’ll tell you all about it another time.’ Steph gave a tight smile as if she didn’t want to talk about it. ‘So,’ she said, changing the subject, ‘Rob’s a party animal?’

  ‘Well, I don’t know if I would put it like that, but he seems to have a nice group of friends and he likes to see them. I don’t keep him prisoner… he’s free to do as he pleases. And he does,’ she laughed. ‘He does exactly as he pleases.’

  ‘And is that all right with you?’

  ‘Yes, of course!’ Rob was the last thing on her mind, instead, she was thinking of Charlie, again… his amazing hands, his eyes and the light stubble on his face. She liked Rob being out, it gave her more time on her own to think about the things she wanted to think about. And she had started to think about Charlie a bit more and had even driven slowly past the shop, half-terrified she would be spotted, and half-excited she might see him. She knew she should just park and go in, like any sane and normal woman and she would, she would, as soon normality and sanity decided to return. ‘Sorry, Steph, what was that?’

  ‘I said I liked the picture of your mother. She looks beautiful.’

  Eilis looked over to the tiny framed picture of Brigid. ‘Yeah,’ she said. ‘Yes, she does.’ And she immediately felt that tightening in her stomach, the loss, the pang, the ache. Brigid had been old when she had Eilis and young when she died. I wish you’d got it the other way round, Mam, tho
ught Eilis. I wish we’d got more time together.

  Brigid had left Galway as a young girl, leaving behind a family, the farm, and her friends. She cried all the way to Dublin, the neighbour she got the lift with pretending not to notice, and began her career on her knees, scrubbing steps of large and lovely red-brick houses.

  She was quiet, reliable, good at her job and, as those qualities were noticed, and she rose – literally and figuratively – from the scullery to become a housekeeper for a Mrs Willoughby of Ailsbury Road. She stayed there long beyond her marriage to Dermot, himself a blow-in from Glenamaddy and the two moved to the cottage in Dalkey. Living there, Brigid used to say, was like being on holiday every day and, after taking the bus home from Mrs Willoughby’s, Brigid would make tea for herself and Dermot and then they would take evening walks up to the quarry and over Killiney Hill, breathing in the sea air, clearing out their lungs after the city smog.

  Finally, after the longest wait, she became pregnant and handed in her notice to Mrs Willoughby. She was forty-one, ancient by all accounts, and was rewarded with the birth of a little girl, called Eilis after Brigid’s own mother.

  Eilis has no memories of her dad, except a few hazy, disconnected images. One: a man giving her tea to drink out of a saucer. And two: when her mother led her by the hand up some steps to the hospital. She thought, or remembered it as going to heaven, and there was Jesus with some sweets which she took.

  When Dermot never came home, it was just Brigid and Eilis, and once Eilis was in school, Brigid went back to work. Not to Mrs Willoughby’s but back to the raw red hands of scrubbing and cleaning, with no nice dress to wear but a pink house coat, where no one said hello to her and instead would walk past her, as though she was invisible.

  At night, her knees would be calloused, her feet throbbing and she would rub Vaseline into her hands, but once everything was cleared away, the two of them would settle down to read their library books. Brigid would read aloud and then, as Eilis grew older, she would read to Brigid. It was a cast of thousands: Miss Marple, Lord Peter Wimsey, Dracula, Jane Eyre, Lucy Honeychurch, Cait and Baba all took up temporary residence. The only other sound in the house was the clock in the hall, ticking. It had been a wedding present from Mrs Willoughby, and every night, before they went to bed, Brigid would wind it. Sometimes, even now, Eilis can still hear its heavy, clear tick.

  Brigid had motor neurone disease, whatever that was – a lingering death sentence was all they knew it to be. She was unable to work, and they lived on hand-outs, charity, benefits. Eilis suggested that she left school – she was fifteen at that point – and got a job. Her mother wouldn’t hear of it.

  ‘You’re staying in school and you are going to university.’ Brigid would say it every evening when she got home as Eilis got older, and so Eilis no longer spent the evenings reading aloud but studying, with Brigid barely breathing so as not to disturb her.

  On Christmas Day of Eilis’ Leaving Cert year, Eilis cooked a chicken and a few potatoes and opened a box of Quality Street. They sat there, smiling at each other and watching television, both pretending this was normal. Neither of them said very much because the truth was unspeakable; her mum wasn’t getting better, she was getting worse. She was going to die.

  By New Year’s Eve, Brigid’s decline was rapid. Steph and Melissa were heading to a house party and had begged her to come out with them. Instead, just after eleven, Eilis put her mother to bed, pillows around her, readied for another sleepless, pointless night.

  ‘Eilis? You are…’ Brigid began. She was breathing with difficulty.

  ‘Mam, don’t speak. Don’t tire yourself.’

  ‘Eilis. Listen to me, now. I am so glad, so glad for you. You have been the golden light in my life.’

  ‘Mam…’ Eilis didn’t know what to say.

  ‘Please, please hear me.’ Her mother was desperate to breathe, she was wheezing and gasping for air. She struggled on. ‘I did something… something right, somewhere, to have you, my lovely girl.’

  Eilis began to cry. ‘I love you, mum.’

  ‘I’m sorry, Eilis, I’m sorry to leave you. I wish I could stay.’ Bridget tried to swallow.

  ‘Don’t Mam…’

  ‘And watch… and watch you grow up.’

  ‘Me too…’ Tears fell onto the bed. They were holding hands. ‘I don’t want you to go.’ The futility of the situation, of their powerlessness over life and death was so stark. They had no choice. Her mother had no control over when she died. No one did. Eilis wanted to rage against it. She wanted to shout and to scream and to get someone to do something. But no one could.

  ‘But you, you be happy. That’s what I want. Happy. Not for anyone else, not for me, not anyone, but for you. Promise me?’ Eilis remembered being surprised at the strength in her mother as she gripped her daughter’s smooth hand. But it was to be the last time they held each other’s hand, the last time they spoke. Eilis still thinks about it and wishes she knew and wonders would she have said anything different, anything more?

  ‘I will. I promise,’ she did say. ‘Now, go to sleep. I love you.’

  ‘I’ll miss you.’

  Eilis couldn’t speak. That night, as distant fireworks banged in the night, her mother slipped away, with Eilis sitting on a chair by the bed. She does know what she would say if she had a second chance of saying goodbye to her mother and that is this: thank you for everything, you were enough for me. You gave me all your love and that was enough.

  But after her mother’s passing, it was just her in the house. The doctor was in and out, the funeral directors came, the neighbour’s all rallied round but there was no one to bring a cup of tea in bed before school and the house was utterly silent. It took her ages to work out what was different and then she remembered she hadn’t wound the clock in the hall. It had stopped, as though the world had stopped. And for Eilis it had.

  After the funeral, and once everyone had gone home, she remembered her promise to her mum and breathed in, picked up her bag and went back to school. She was eighteen. God knows, how she had managed to get on with her life, going to medical school, all that training, the competitiveness, the exhaustion, the exams… it was all going to be worth it, wasn’t it though?

  She didn’t have much to show for the world… except for me, thought Eilis. Except for me.

  ‘Yes,’ she said to Steph. ‘She was such a beautiful person.’

  Later, after Steph had gone home, she went into her bedroom and took out Brigid’s old cardigan. ‘Where did it all go wrong?’ she wondered. She had worked so hard, done everything right, hadn’t asked for too much or too little from Rob, and yet she was nearly 40 and was no closer to having the kind of relationship she had always imagined she would have, something fulfilling and deep and wonderful. She and Rob were close but not close enough. She was aware she was only living half a life but she wasn’t sure how or why. Her mother was so wise, she would have known what she should do.

  Eilis had arrived at university, traumatised. She had buried her mother, sat her Leaving Cert, and moved into a flat in town, all in the space of six months. She had not cried once.

  She remembered looking around at all the other first-years in the Walton lecture theatre; the shiny-haired, fresh-faced, expensively clothed Gods-in-waiting. Not one of them looked like her. They were glossy and confident.

  She’d thought of Melissa and Steph, over in UCD, wishing she was with them. They had begun the week before and were already full of stories of parties and clubs and new friends.

  And here she was facing into a six-year course. She didn’t know where she was going to find the energy for it all. She pulled the door open, ready to flee. And then she saw a boy, sitting by the wall, his hair was bushy, his jacket too big and too old for him. He glanced at her and he raised his eyebrows. Just that. And it was enough for her to think, to know, she wasn’t alone. She turned around and walked up the steps and found a seat and sat down. She watched this boy after that. He would sit by himself
, all the time. She didn’t quite have the courage to speak to him.

  His name was Robert – this was before he called himself Rob. He was up from the country and entirely opposite to all the other lads who all seemed to know each other from various schools. Over the years, she felt protective of him in the way that he was determined to remake himself, mould himself into something he wasn’t quite. His ambition was impressive, and who was she to judge. His accent was moderated, family history subtly modified.

  But when she first met him he was green around the ears, a farmer’s son straight off the bus from Ennis. They spoke for the first time one evening when she was in the library, working. She was aware of someone standing beside her. She looked up.

  ‘Eilis?’

  ‘Yes.’ It was the first time anyone from her class had bothered talking to her in the four weeks since term began.

  ‘I’m Robert. Rob. Howya.’ Already she could see his hair had been cut since day one and the blazer swapped for a cord jacket.

  ‘I know.’ She didn’t know what else to say. His hands felt slightly clammy, but she liked the feel of him, strong. He had kind eyes, she remembered. They were the things that drew her to him.

  ‘So… how’re you getting on?’ he said. ‘How’s the essay going?’

  ‘Yes, I handed it in this morning. Have you done yours?’

  ‘Just finished.’ He put up both thumbs. ‘It was a killer. So, what are you working on now? Don’t you ever take a break?’

  She shrugged. ‘It’s relentless. I just find that if I read ahead, I can just about understand what is going on. Otherwise, it would all be a bit much.’

  It was the first time she had opened up to anyone about how hard it all was. No one knew quite how much work it had taken to get there. And it seemed that everyone else on the course found it so easy.

  ‘It’s tough, isn’t it?’ said Rob.

  She nodded. ‘I feel so stupid all the time… like I shouldn’t be here. I wish I was at UCD. Doing arts.’

  He raised his eyebrows. ‘Arts? But, sure, that’s not a course. It’s a hobby.’