At a Time Like This (10 page)

Now she was smiling, her round face pink and glowing. ‘Frank asked me to marry him on Saturday night!’

‘And did you?’ Georgie drawled.

I jumped in. ‘That’s great news, Nora! Congratulations! What a lovely ring!’

I stamped on Georgie’s toe. It can’t have hurt because she was wearing boots. But it did the trick. She sat up straighter, glared at me, and reached out her hand to hold
Nora’s. She did a half-decent imitation of enthusiasm. Nora’s plain, open face was a picture of pure happiness. Why would anybody want to rain on that parade?

She was nodding away in delight. ‘I didn’t know, but Frank asked my father’s permission last week. So Mammy and Daddy knew, of course, but I didn’t. It was such a
surprise!’

Claire was smiling broadly. ‘And did he go down on one knee?’

Nora nodded again. ‘Yes, and he gave me twelve long-stemmed red roses, too. And then we went to the Gresham and the meal was wonderful and we all stayed up late and I’m just so
happy’

I could see Georgie’s expression: All the stereotypes in place, then.’ I was thinking pretty much the same thing myself. I did have the grace to feel ashamed, though. And once the
shame receded, I had the first stirrings of what I now know to be bitterness. Watching Nora glow like that made the ache I’d felt since Saturday night all the more intense. Ray was my first
serious boyfriend and I suppose I didn’t know what to expect, although something inside me warned me that so much pain wasn’t normal. But then again, how do you know what’s normal
when you have no experience of normality? I should have listened to myself that day, though, listened to my own intuition. In all the time we had been together, Ray had not performed one single
thoughtful or unselfish act. I mean, I see that now, but of course I didn’t see it then. But part of me must have seen
something,
otherwise why the sudden lump in my throat, the sharp
stab to the heart that made me realize that I would never be as happy as Nora, not as long as Ray was in my life?

‘Sit down, Nora,’ I said then. ‘Would you like me to get you a cup of tea? A sticky bun to celebrate?’

‘I’d love just a cup of tea, thanks.’

I stood up and took her hand and examined the ring all over again. ‘It’s a really beautiful ring, Nora, and Frank’s a lucky man. I wish you both years and years of
happiness.’ And I walked off towards the self-service counters. I could feel Georgie’s eyes on my back, but I didn’t care. Tears stung me and I was glad of the chance to walk
away.

And that was the end of Trinity for Nora, as I think we all suspected it would be. The wedding preparations, the house, the garden – she didn’t have a minute, she said. She sat her
exams in May, but then dropped out. Nothing that Georgie or Claire or I said was enough to make her change her mind. I think we were the ones who persuaded her to do her exams at least – her
parents seemed not to care. I was surprised at that. I mean, they’d nearly suffocated her with protectiveness up until then. Georgie said that they were ‘possessed of an unseemly
eagerness’ to have their daughter off their hands. She was reading George Gissing at the time, so Claire and I had to put up with a spate of stilted nineteenth-century language until she got
it out of her system.

Frank wanted a woman at home, Helly told us. It was the right place to be, for a couple who planned on having dozens of children. Frank was older than she was, she kept telling us, and
didn’t want to wait.

‘It’s just,’ she said, ‘that we want to start a family straight away, once we’re married. After all, Frank is thirty’

‘Does that mean,’ asked Georgie, ‘that you’ll start trying now? After all, the wedding is only four months away. What difference would it make?’

Nora looked so upset that Claire and I had to turn away. We made sure to look busy with our rucksacks and packets of cigarettes. We rummaged around for matches and lighters. It was late May and
we were sat together in O’Neill’s, celebrating the last exam of first year.

‘Of course not,’ Nora said. She sounded indignant. ‘Frank doesn’t believe in sex before marriage.’

‘And what about you?’ asked Claire softly. ‘What do you believe in?’

Helly blushed at Claire’s question. She looked down at her bitten fingernails and twisted her engagement ring as she did so. I don’t know why, but I felt sad for her just then. I
felt as though there was something she wasn’t telling, and I felt it strongly between us on that afternoon. But whatever it was, she was giving nothing away.

‘Of course not,’ she said again. But her lower lip trembled. ‘I have more respect for myself than that.’ And then she looked right at Claire.

Georgie and I glanced at one another but it was Claire who changed the subject. I thought Nora’s words had stung. There was just the tiniest flicker across Claire’s eyes to show that
she had registered Nora’s remark. Respect? I remember thinking. What has respect got to do with anything? She and Paul were still an item at that stage. They used to disappear into
Claire’s room on a Friday night and not come out till Sunday, most weekends. Well, apart from the occasional searches for food and bottles of wine. Georgie used to roll her eyes at the sounds
of muffled laughter coming from the bedroom. We’d turn up the music when the laughter stopped and the cries became more, well . . . private. They really loved one another, those two. By that
stage, too, Claire and I had become good friends. I’d stopped thinking of her as a threat. I was glad for Paul, too. I hadn’t liked any of his previous girlfriends. Didn’t think
any of them were good enough.

I still don’t know what possessed him to do what he did. All I know is, Claire was never the same afterwards. I still feel badly about that, that she felt she couldn’t talk to me,
because he was my big brother. She knew how close we were. She murmured something once about divided loyalties and families and blood being thicker than water. When I tried to say no, that that
wasn’t how it had to be between us, she silenced me with one of her clear, blue-eyed looks: half fire, half ice. On that afternoon in O’Neill’s, she looked at Nora in the same
way, but it was wasted on her. I admired Claire for her coolness. She no longer showed any trace of annoyance at the fact that someone who was supposed to be her friend had all but called her a
slut.

‘Well, as long as you’re comfortable with whatever you’ve decided,’ she said to Helly ‘Each to their own.’ She drained her glass. ‘And now it’s
your round, Georgie. Mine’s a
glass
of Guinness, this time. Don’t go wasting another pint on me.’

Claire and I spent one whole afternoon together the following September, a couple of weeks before Nora and Frank got married. It was unusual for there to be just the two of us,
but Georgie was off doing her repeats. Failing her first-year exams had shocked her – shocked all of us. She was cranky and tired all the time, no fun at all. It was a relief when she headed
off at half-past eight each morning. I was just back from London. I’d have stayed a lot longer only for Nora and Frank’s wedding. I loved London, loved the feeling that nobody knew me
there. Georgie liked it too, but not as much as I did. I think she was relieved to come back in August to study for her exams. In a funny way, I think she found that London was too big for her.
Georgie has always liked to be the big fish in a small pond. That’s not a criticism, by the way. That’s just how she is and she’s very good at it.

Me, I loved the spread-outness of the city, the different kinds of people, the whole feeling that London was kind of an extended village, made up of lots of smaller villages all strung together.
I spent every free minute in Carnaby Street and Petticoat Lane, rummaging in the stalls for bargains. And I got them, too, by the ton. I couldn’t believe the things I was able to pick up for
half-nothing. Georgie and I stayed in a hostel in central London and our caretaker was a woman in her sixties. She used to sit in the evenings in her poky little office and knit and crochet,
probably to pass the time. I got chatting to her one day and admired some of the stuff that she’d made. One thing led to another and she ended up lending me a sewing machine. Once Georgie
left, I spent all my spare time in my room, altering my weekend bargains and having the time of my life.

During the day I did two jobs, one as a waitress in a restaurant called Galliano’s, which was an upmarket caff with delusions of grandeur. Then I worked as a barmaid in the Frog and
Nightgown in Crouch End. I’ve never understood the names that the English give their pubs. Anyway, I loathed both jobs with a passion. I hid it well, though, and earned a small fortune in
tips. I think it was that summer that decided me, one way or the other, that earning my living would have to be somehow centred on clothes. I missed the range of markets when I came back to Dublin
and almost got to resent Helly’s wedding for pulling me back home before I was ready.

Anyway, the afternoon that Claire and I spent together was a typical one for early September. The weather is often better than in the summer. Or what’s supposed to be summer in Ireland. We
were lounging on the patio in hazy sunshine and she opened a bottle of wine. Claire had persuaded Georgie’s dad to upgrade our flat. She’d even stayed in Dublin most of that summer to
supervise the work. That was the start of Claire’s passion for design and she was really good at it. She’d showered our landlord with plans and schemes and costings that surprised and
impressed even us. She impressed him, too, and he offered her a job on the spot. He had lots of renovation projects going on all over Dublin. The man was loaded. He just couldn’t seem to get
it wrong, old man White. Everything he touched turned to gold. I remember how Claire had jumped at his offer, even though she’d seemed to be hell-bent earlier in the year on coming to London
with Georgie and me. But whatever Georgie’s dad lured her with had been too good, and so she stayed put, apart from the occasional long weekend with us, sneaking into our room in the hostel
and sleeping on the floor. And of course, there was Paul, who stayed in Dublin that summer as well, another reason to stay close to home.

I remember thinking that maybe things weren’t going too well between them and that Claire had stayed for the summer to put things right. Maybe she was trying to keep on fixing things. As
you do. At least, that’s what I believed at the time. There was no way I’d have asked her, though. We had an unspoken agreement that what happened between her and Paul was private, off
limits. It would have made my life too difficult, had I been in the middle, as the sister and the friend. And, even though Paul and I had always shared most things, I would never have pried into
his relationship with Claire, for the same reason. I think he understood that well enough.

But it meant that I missed him in a way I wasn’t prepared to admit, not then. I remember thinking how much easier it would have been if he had fallen in love with somebody I could like
that wasn’t already my friend. My own problems with Ray complicated things even more. It was very hard watching the progress of the perfect relationship while I was often so unhappy with my
own.

One practical benefit, though, for all of us in her staying in Dublin that summer was that we had a patio and a deck and a built-in barbecue long before other people like to think that they were
invented.

‘Well?’ she was saying, as she tested the varnish on her well-manicured toenails. ‘What do you make of Frank, then? Seriously, now. There’s no Georgie here to be
smart-arsed.’

I sipped while I pretended to consider my reply. ‘Mmm,’ I said. ‘Well, Nora likes him and they suit each other, right? He’s got the steady job, working in the family
business and the pension is sorted. I think he’ll do her just fine.’ And I drained my glass.

Claire refilled it at once. ‘Much activity between the sheets, do you think?’ Her expression was demure, all downcast eyes and sweeping fringe – a carbon copy of the Princess
Di look. Shy Di, as the papers loved calling her. But it was more than that. I remember feeling that there was a frailty to Claire that summer that hadn’t been there before. And she’d
had her hair cut, out of the blue. That was unusual in a household where everything was discussed, from men to money and what colour nail-varnish to wear. Georgie and I protested at the loss of all
those voluptuous curls, but Claire had only shrugged.

‘Time for a change, don’t ye think?’

No, we didn’t, and I’ll bet Paul didn’t, either. But I didn’t dare ask.

Now I pretended to splutter at her curiosity about Helly and Frank’s sex life. ‘Claire! This is Nora we’re talking about. Don’t you remember that she and Frank
don’t believe in sex before marriage?’

Claire looked disbelieving.

‘You don’t remember? The day we finished our exams? She told us.’ I decided I wouldn’t mention ‘respect’ and how Claire herself had reacted to what Helly
said. But I think she remembered. She went quiet.

‘And you think it was the truth?’

‘Absolutely,’ I said. I visualized Frank, his thin wrists and thinner hair. Absolutely’ I said again, even more convinced. And then I felt ashamed of myself for thinking that
sex should only be for the young and beautiful. Like us.

She ran her index finger down the stem of her glass and caught the few drops of Sauvignon Blanc that had escaped. When she spoke again, she seemed thoughtful. ‘Oh, I don’t
know,’ she said. ‘I’m sure her little sojourn in London a few years back must have opened her eyes to a thing or two?’

I shook my head. ‘No,’ I said. ‘There were no adventures. She didn’t even like London. She told me so. She stayed at home with some aunt-in-law, or some shite like that,
the whole time she was there. Helly’s not one to take risks. I know her. Trust me.’

Claire sighed. ‘Well, the only thing we can hope for is that Frank isn’t another blunderer.’ That was a great word of Claire’s: blunderer. Her face brightened for a
moment. ‘Hey – didn’t he say he’d fallen in love with Nora’s ankles, when she went into the shop to buy shoes?’

I nodded. ‘That’s the official version.’

‘Well, then, Maggie, me dear,’ and she nodded and topped up our glasses again, ‘he can’t be all bad. A man who falls in love with a woman’s ankles can’t be
all cardigan and slippers.’