by Anne Doughty
I turned round to smile at her as she closed the bedroom door behind us.
‘Val, every girl needs a friend who would murder for her. Don’t think it doesn’t help. It does.’
Chapter 10
A cloud of cigarette smoke rose to envelop me as I followed Valerie downstairs. Through the teak-framed glass panels that separated hall from lounge, I could see the close-packed figures gesticulating to each other, heads nodding, fingers pointing, their faces red with heat and alcohol, their voices raised in a crescendo of noise that assaulted me like shock waves from an explosion. I clutched the banister as I felt all the colour drain from my own face.
Val turned to me at the foot of the stairs, took one look and raised an eyebrow. ‘Jenny, why don’t you sit out here for a moment. I’ll hunt up Alan and send him through to you.’
I nodded gratefully and watched her weave her way through the tight press of bodies that filled the long lounge from one end to the other. One glance at that room had been enough. The thought of being shut up with those people, their smoke, and their noise, was more than I could bear, but it was no problem to Val. Some instinct told her it was time to show herself and in she went. I watched her progress through the crowded room, amazed at the way solid groups parted before her lightest touch, responding to her smiles and waves as she passed.
And yet I had caught a look in her eye as she left me which did make me wonder just how easy she really felt. Val is a superb actress. When she makes up her mind to do something, she can carry it off with complete conviction but that says nothing at all about what the effort may cost her.
Val’s last party, I said to myself, as I sat down on the telephone seat. Mine too, perhaps.
I ran my eye over the familiar faces. Mostly our crowd, Colin would say. People from schooldays, or Queen’s, or the Rugby Club, for Bob had been a keen player too, until recently. I looked around the student pairings, now turned into ‘respectable young couples’, with someone back at the new house to look after the babies. The room was full of up-and-coming young businessmen like Colin. Useful contacts, he called them now. Not people we knew and liked, and certainly not old friends. Not any more. Just contacts. Useful or not, as the case might be.
‘An’ I sez to him, “C’mon, Charlie, wha’s this car got, solid gold bumpers?” And he sez to me, “All right, Nev, eight hundred it is. But yer a hard man.’”
There was a burst of laughter as Neville slapped hands on the bargain. I looked around to see where Karen was. At the other side of the room, she was holding forth to a tight cluster of women, her podgy fingers busy with bright, precise little movements. As the laughter died, she paused, threw one disdainful glance across at him and went back to her story. Neville’s face crumpled. Before anyone noticed, he buried his nose in his tankard.
My eyes were prickling with the drifting smoke. I closed them, leaned back, and felt the chill of the wall on my bare shoulders. I had known Neville for a long time, though I couldn’t remember exactly when his family moved into Rathmore Drive. He’d been sent to a preparatory school somewhere outside Bangor, so we only saw each other at Sunday School and later on at church socials. It was when we were both press-ganged for the church choir that I really got to know him. Every Wednesday evening we’d walk to and from choir practice on the Lisburn Road. I learnt a great deal about sport on those walks, rugby in particular. But choir practice was grim. We only managed to stick it for a year and then used studying for A-levels as an excuse to make our escape.
The October we went to Queen’s, Neville’s family moved to Malone Park. ‘A step up in the world’, was my mother’s tight-lipped comment. Neville, like Colin, was destined for the family business, glazing and double-glazing. Reluctantly, he read economics. We’d bumped into each other one day, gone to the Union for coffee and talked for ages. He admitted how much the course bored him but, as he said, there was the rugby. He had once told me that his greatest ambition was to be capped for Ireland and it was clear he was going to make it. Only a week or two later, Neville ended up at the bottom of a collapsed scrum and his broken shoulder put an end to his chances.
Now he was the father of two boys and the husband of a woman who didn’t appear to care what secretaryship of the Rugby Club might mean for him. When I thought of the way she’d behaved today and her particular brand of carping criticism, I could only think of Maisie McKinstry. Karen was a Maisie in the making and if Neville threw himself into his work the way William John had done, he might indeed end up just as rich but he would certainly be just as unhappy.
‘Jenny!’
Startled, I opened my eyes.
‘Alan,’ I cried. ‘I thought you’d abandoned ship.’
‘What, and miss seeing you twice in one year?’ he retorted. ‘No, I was on a mission,’ he went on quickly. ‘There’s enough alcohol to float a liner out there, but we appear to have drunk all the milk. ‘
I laughed and moved along the bench to make room for him.
‘I don’t quite believe this,’ I began. ‘Your last communiqué from Kilmarnock said Patterson’s had just made you an unrefusable offer.’
I watched him as he lowered himself on to the narrow seat, a familiar quizzical look on his face. As uneasy as ever in the first moments of meeting, his eyes were not quite able to meet mine, though his smile was warm and I knew he was pleased to see me.
‘Indeed they did,’ he agreed. ‘A huge increase in salary, a seat on the board, a company car and a piece of carpet under my desk.’
‘And you actually refused?’ I was totally taken aback by the edge in my voice. It sounded as if I were criticising him for turning it down, which was the last thing I’d intended. The very words ‘seat on the board’ had set off the response without any help from me.
‘I did,’ he said quietly. He looked awkwardly up and down the hall and I was sure the sharpness of my reaction had hurt him. It quite overwhelmed me to think I could ever do such a thing to Alan of all people.
I tried to pull myself together, fought back the ridiculous tears that sprang to my eyes and swallowed hard.
‘Oh Alan,’ I said, touching his sleeve. ‘How terribly unfashionable of you.’
This time I managed to get the words out as I meant them, light and teasing. As he turned back towards me, I smiled encouragingly.
‘There aren’t many in there who would have done what you did,’ I said gently as I nodded towards the crowded room.
‘But there’s one out here who might.’ He said it quietly, matter-of-factly, as he looked at me directly for the first time. For a moment or two, I wasn’t even sure I’d heard what he’d said properly over the awful racket going on only a few yards away. But as I looked back at him, I seemed to hear the words again. Ordinary words. Unexceptional words. Suddenly, they took on a meaning I had not thought of before.
He was saying that I might well have done just what he had done. He was quite right, of course. He knew perfectly well how I felt about the endless focus on money that had become such a feature among the people Colin called ‘our crowd’. Quite suddenly, I was so aware of the two of us, out here in the hall, sitting side-by-side, looking in at the party. I’d never understood Alan when he’d sometimes talked about being an outsider, the loneliness of feeling you didn’t belong. Now, I understood. I hadn’t been able to put any name to it, but this was what I’d been feeling for months. I was an outsider too. I didn’t belong in there with our crowd. There was no part I could play in their lives, nor they in mine. There were no lines for any of us to say to each other any more.
Alan and I weren’t just sitting outside, here and now, we were permanently outside. Both of us. Alan had known it for years, but until this moment it had never entered my mind that I too might be just as much of an outsider as he was.
I nodded slowly in reply and dived into the pocket of my skirt for my handkerchief. I was so shocked by where my own thoughts had taken me that just for the moment I couldn’t think of anything whatever to say.
‘What is there?’ I asked brightly. I glanced up at him and caught a look on his face that made me wonder if he’d spotted that something was wrong. If he had, he covered it beautifully while I collected myself.
‘Just about everything. All the hard stuff, variety of homebrews. Hugh, Mark One, Alwyn, Mark Three, Neville, Mark Six, none of which, as a former chemist, I can recommend,’ he said lightly. ‘But there is a bottle of that dry sherry we had at Christmas. Bob produced it from the garden shed. Said he’d been keeping it till you came!’
‘Just what I need, Alan. Just what I need.’
Relief swept over me as I watched him stride off down the hall and disappear into the kitchen. Dear Alan, he hadn’t changed a bit. Not in the things that mattered most to me. For three years now we’d met only at Christmas, at the Annual General Meeting, as Val called her Boxing Night dinner. That last meeting seemed an eternity away and yet at this minute I felt as if I’d seen Alan only yesterday. It was nothing to do with how often you saw someone. It was all about what happened when you did.
I knew I could say anything I wanted to Alan. And he’d listen. Whether he agreed or disagreed, it didn’t matter. It was the sheer blessed relief of talking to someone who actually listened to what you said. And someone, too, who always gave me honest answers to my questions, even when those answers had to admit doubt or ignorance.
If there was one thing that had been making me utterly miserable over the last few months, it was Colin’s sureness about everything. From the fastest car in its class to the best place to eat out, from the time it would take to mend a washing machine to the golden future of the Province, he was so sure of himself and so completely free of doubt. All the time, he behaved as if he could map out his own future, and mine, as easily as he could plot a flow chart for a contract.
‘Here you are, Bob’s compliments. Sends his apologies. He’s on supper duty.’ Alan dropped into his seat beside me. ‘To the good old days,’ he went on, touching his glass against mine.
‘Oh Alan, you said that just the way you did when I was still at school. You used to frighten the life out of me,’ I laughed, as I sipped my sherry appreciatively.
It had taken me a long time to get used to Alan’s ironic manner, but having mastered it, I found its dryness as pleasing as the sherry Bob had so thoughtfully set aside for me.
‘Still at school,’ he repeated thoughtfully. ‘A long time ago, Jenny. How long have we known each other?’
‘Depends what you mean by “know”,’ I said lightly. ‘I can tell you the first time we spent a day together. I’ll never forget it.’
‘Sounds ominous.’
‘Yes, it was. You were in your first year at Oxford and I was only in the fourth form. Val asked me to come up with you to visit Aunt Audrey and Uncle John and she insisted I sit in the front seat. I couldn’t think of a single intelligent thing to say the whole way up to Ballycastle.’
‘Yes, I remember,’ he said, stretching out his legs more comfortably. ‘I’d had strict instructions to be nice to you and I thought I was going to cop it when Val got me home for making such a mess of it.’
‘And didn’t you?’
‘No, for some reason she let me off. She said you needed time to get used to me.’
‘Certainly I did. About three years!’
‘Oh, come, Jenny, was I as awful as that?’
‘Yes,’ I said laughing. ‘Everything you said seemed to be touched with acid. It was like trying to be friendly to a porcupine. But it wasn’t entirely your fault. It just took me rather a long time to work out that you weren’t quite as worldly-wise and cynical as you liked to make out.’
‘Given your tender years, that was some achievement,’ he said, looking down into his glass and shifting uneasily. ‘Come on now. You’re not that ancient.’
‘Wouldn’t you say I’ve mellowed in my maturity?’ he asked, taking refuge in the teasing tone he’d used so often to get himself out of awkward situations.
‘I hadn’t exactly noticed,’ I retorted.
‘Oh, that really disappoints me,’ he said, pulling a face. ‘Only the other day, Val said I was almost fit for human consumption.’
He’d picked up my light tone and for a few, blissful minutes I’d put aside all my anxieties. I remembered just how easily we had always been able to talk about anything. If anyone could help me sort myself out, it would be Alan. I drained my sherry glass.
‘Don’t be disappointed, Alan,’ I said quietly. ‘Some people do appreciate your astringency. I could do with a spot of it at the moment. It’s been in pretty short supply round here just recently.’
‘That we shall have to address,’ he said, jumping to his feet. ‘When I’ve fetched us a refill.’
A couple of long strides and he disappeared through the kitchen door. I smiled to myself. Those long strides had once been a problem to me. When we went out taking pictures together at Queen’s, on any reasonable surface those same strides had left me trailing far behind. We used to laugh about it, especially when I got my own back, for when it was wet rock, or seaweed, or mud, I came into my own. Alan always said he was quite intimidated by my sure-footedness.
A long time now since I’d scrambled over rock or mud in pursuit of a picture. I had forgotten just how much time we’d spent together, my first two years at Queen’s, while Alan had been studying for his PhD. Some of the best times were up on the north coast when he and Val visited their aunt and uncle in their rambling old house that looked out across Rathlin Sound to Rathlin Island itself. Aunt Audrey and Uncle John were lovely people. They made me so welcome and sent the three of us off, walking and exploring, armed with vast picnics, sketchbooks and cameras.
When Alan and I joined the Photographic Society, we went off looking for pictures together for the monthly competitions. Often, we would go to the remote parts of Antrim, to places I knew through visiting with my father. One humid summer day, we found ourselves outside the churchyard at the foot of my father’s glen. It was Alan who insisted we look for the gravestone my father used to see from his schoolroom window. And it was Alan who found it. He looked at it for a long time, took some pictures, and then asked me if I would take him to see the site of the old cottage where my father had been born.
At the time, I thought it a strange thing for him to ask, though I knew he liked my father and always listened carefully to his stories on the rare occasions when they met. We drove up the valley, parked on the road, walked down the rough track that led to what once was McTaggart’s farm and worked our way cautiously along the hillside, for the path was so rarely used now, it had almost disappeared.
When we finally reached the fragment of gable still standing amid the tumbled walls and the invading bracken and heather, we became so absorbed in the view that we didn’t notice the darkening sky behind us. As the first drops of rain splashed down, we dived under the lee of the gable and let the squall whip over us. We emerged, dishevelled but dry, continued our explorations and then got thoroughly soaked by a second downpour as we climbed back up the track to the road.
There had been so many happy times. I sat twisting my engagement ring round and round on my finger and asked myself whatever had happened at the end of that year to change everything. Alan had got his doctorate and the offer of a very good job in Cheshire. Val and Bob got engaged on her birthday in August and we had a marvellous celebration with them, and then, before Alan left in September, we had a whole series of splendid expeditions together.
In October I joined the Dramatic Society and that was where I met Colin six months later when he was drafted in to help with a difficult set and stayed on to help with the production. I’d seen Alan when he came home to visit Val and he came over specially the weekend of the Photogr
aphic Society’s outing. But after that September, I realised, we had not gone out together again. Until this moment, I had never asked myself why that should have been so.
‘Sorry about that, Jenny. Val needed some candle ends paring.’
‘For her romantic gloom?’ I asked matter-of-factly, as I pushed away the thoughts that had been crowding in upon me.
“‘The last performance on any stage,” was what she said this afternoon when we did the balloons.’ He handed me my sherry and sat down.
‘So you’ve come home, Alan. For good?’
‘For good or ill. Which remains to be seen. I’m certainly committed to this new project for a year or two. It’ll take at least that long to get it off the ground.’
‘And after?’
He opened his free hand and looked at me very directly. ‘Who knows? Can we predict who we’re going to be in two or three years’ time, never mind the circumstances we’ll find ourselves in?’ he said quietly.
I nodded. ‘You’ve always said things like that, Alan, and I’ve been reluctant to admit that we can change so fast. Perhaps I’ve known too many people who never seem to change. Too many who know just who they’ll be in three years’ time. Or thirty. And where. And how wonderfully it’ll all work out.’ I stared at the faces beyond the glass panels and twisted my sherry glass in my hand.
‘Jenny?’ he said softly.
I glanced towards him. He was looking at me intently, on his face a look of gentleness I could not bear. It was a look I had seen before and had somehow forgotten. Alan had looked at me just this way more than once in that late summer before he went off to Cheshire.
‘I was thinking of a nice set of prints,’ I said hastily. ‘For the annual exhibition. “Life on the way to the top” by Jennifer Erwin, Honorary Member. What d’you think?’ I waved a hand at the screen dividing us from the lounge and was relieved when he turned away. Each panel framed the sort of image we’d once have entered as a ‘candid’. He picked up my cue instantly.