At a Time Like This (19 page)

I was thinking: Ray just had to tell her, didn’t he? Couldn’t help himself. Had to give his wife chapter and verse, add insult to injury. I could imagine him whining and whingeing,
confessing everything and begging forgiveness all at the same time. But also, in some obscure way, boasting, smiling smugly to himself. I’m so sorry, dear, a moment of sheer madness –
but, gosh, see how attractive I am to women? I just can’t help myself. Even your best friends can’t resist me.

Just then, I noticed Nora was about to speak. Her face was prim, her mouth a fine, disapproving line: default mode, as I used to call it, despite protests from Claire and Maggie. I raised my
hand. ‘Don’t, Nora. Don’t say anything.’ I could feel her look at me, feel the white heat of her resentment boring into the back of my head as I turned to face Maggie. But I
didn’t care. It was time I took charge. After all, it was my house. Somebody had to do something, to salvage whatever there was left to be salvaged. ‘What do you want to do,
Maggie?’ I could see that she was about to crumble. But she didn’t. I allowed her to interpret my question in any way she chose.

‘I want to go home,’ she managed finally. She stood up and spoke with dignity. ‘I want to go home to my husband. And my family.’ And then she walked, slowly and with great
care, towards the dining-room door. ‘Now, please – call me a taxi,’ and she closed the door quietly behind her.

Remembering all of this, Maggie’s exit, Nora’s fussing, Claire’s weeping, I can still feel the ache that filled the room that night, as each of us contemplated all the
intertwining losses and griefs and half-truths that we would have to wade through in the coming months, perhaps years. We tried to tread cautiously at first, but nothing worked. It took two years
– well, two years and three months, to be exact – for this rupture even to begin to be healed. And the really sad thing was, we all knew that Ray wasn’t worth it. Ray was, and
always has been, a serial adulterer. We knew it and guarded it and sat on such knowledge and never mentioned the war. What hurt Maggie most, I think, was the fact that now her husband’s
infidelities were out in the open, infiltrating that safe and comfortable existence that she loved to share with her friends. He had finally tainted the only part of her life that had ever been
completely hers.

They made up eventually, Claire and Maggie, one night in my house when Nora was in Tipperary with her in-laws. I invited them both separately, so that neither knew the other would be there. I
had them arrive at different times. When they met in my living room, they were both instantly angry at me, which was exactly what I had intended.

‘Be as pissed off with me as you like,’ I said to them. ‘It’s been over two years and things have . . . moved on.’ I knew, because Maggie had told me, that Ray had
recently moved on, too, into the territory of his latest secretary. ‘So why shouldn’t we move on, heal the breach? We need each other, you know we do.’

I uncorked the white wine that lay in the ice bucket on the coffee table. ‘I’m going to see to the twins. I’ll be back in half an hour. Just remember how miserable we all are
without each other.’ And I left. I meant it, too. I’d missed our evenings back then more than I’d thought I would, our phone conversations afterwards, the speculations, the
gossip. Even leaving Nora out of the equation from my point of view, have you any idea how many possible combinations of friendship there are among three articulate, competitive, complex women?
Enough to liven up most days of the week, that’s for sure. And I still had each of them on the phone to me anyway, Maggie and Claire, almost daily. I was never sure how much information from
one I was expected to feed back to the other. It had me exhausted.

So. The time came when I felt I had to do something, even if it backfired. And Nora’s absences have often been times filled with opportunity for me, one way and another.

When I got back downstairs, the room was very still. The twins had been angelic on that night, and we’d all taken turns reading aloud chapters from
The Big Friendly Giant.
Each of
the girls was very proud of her ability to read. It was one of those glowing, quiet times that I’m glad we shared. I’d been able, too, to listen for raised voices, anger or slamming
doors from the room below, but none of it had happened. Nevertheless, I knocked on the living-room door before I entered. Claire was hiccuping, the aftermath of what must have been a silent storm
of sobbing. Maggie was holding her hand and stroked it, gently.

‘Don’t, Claire, don’t break your heart over it. It’s too—’

And then she stopped speaking. Fair enough. That was the deal that she and I had agreed on. The details would be between her and Claire. They were nobody else’s business, certainly not
mine. But I was relieved they had made up. It meant we could, maybe, patch things up and stitch our friendships back together again. Had Maggie and Claire remained estranged, I don’t know
what I would have done. I’d probably have fought her, my oldest friend, but I didn’t want to. I was glad that night that I didn’t have to.

Because Maggie and I rarely fight. Oh, she doesn’t let me get away with things: she argues with me and challenges me and calls things as she sees them. But that’s not fighting, not
in my book. There are only two significant occasions of conflict that I can remember in the forty years we have been friends. Each occasion is very different from the other. The first makes me
laugh. The second gives me pause for reflection. It still makes me wonder how well we can ever know someone else, how we always forget that they retain the capacity to surprise us and make us feel
humble.

Anyway, the first time Maggie really stood up to me was about fourteen years in the brewing. It concerned a little girl called Melissa McKee – a child whom Maggie and I both knew while at
primary school. As it happened, Melissa was put sitting between Maggie and me one day and I objected. The child wet her knickers constantly and even then, everything in me rebelled at the indignity
of enduring that kind of unpleasantness:
any
kind of unpleasantness. Maggie was always the kinder of the two of us, that goes without saying. Nevertheless, my objections – vociferous
and inappropriate – landed both of us in hot water and the Principal’s office at the same time. She punished us with extra homework: spellings, I think. But it was no punishment for me.
Books have been my refuge all my life. They gave me something to do to fill up the silences of my childhood home. Maggie minded, but she didn’t kick up about it. At least not on that
occasion. Our parents might have been summoned to the school as well, but I can no longer remember.

Years later, at some birthday party or other of mine, celebrated while we were all still at Trinity, I remember that I objected loudly to the presence of Nora, whom I emphatically had
not
invited. It was then that Maggie went in for the kill. She’d waited all that time, and now she was taking no prisoners. I wanted the Helicopter to go; Maggie was adamant that she should
stay.

‘Remember Melissa McKee?’ she said to me. ‘You got me extra spellings
and
tables for that caper. Now it’s payback time.’

I was stunned. For a moment, all I could think was: who the
fuck
is Melissa McKee? It’s
Nora Murphy
we’re talking about here. Then I saw Maggie’s grinning face,
her slow nod, her ‘come to me’ hand gestures as she encouraged my memory, and I burst out laughing.

‘Melissa McKee!’ I said as I cracked up. ‘She smelt of wee!’

And that was the end of occasion Number One. Occasion Number Two was more serious. It belonged to our teenage years. Or our Teenage Years, as our parents might have referred to them. With good
reason. We were tearaways, Maggie and I. Given what adolescents get up to today, I suppose we weren’t as bad as we might have been. Nevertheless, that didn’t stop us trying. On this
occasion, Maggie’s demonstration of loyalty astounded me, even frightened me, I think, with its force and the depth of its implications. Don’t the Chinese believe if someone saves your
life, that you in turn become responsible for them, that you owe them for as long as you both shall live? Well, then.

We were about fifteen or so when my father abruptly told us – my mother and me, that is – that we were leaving Killiney. It probably came as no surprise to her, but I remember feeling
a mixture of shock and disdain. He’d said this kind of thing before, a number of times, but nothing had ever happened. He talked about moving to a ‘classier neighbourhood’ in the
same way that he’d mention politicians by their first names, boast about handshakes and deals done and money secreted in brown envelopes: all this when he thought I wasn’t listening.
Parents have no idea what their children hear while sitting at the top of the stairs, or peering through cracks in doorways while heated discussions ensue in bedrooms and kitchens and hallways:
particularly in the days when phones were still located in the coldest, draughtiest places in the house. It is a lesson that has served me well with my own children. I have always remembered the
acuteness of their capacity for hearing, along with their ability to make themselves invisible. Unhearing, unseeing, un-present, right in the midst of upheaval. And avidly taking everything in.

‘The decision is made, Georgina,’ my father told me, ‘so there’s no point in you going on about it.’ At this stage, I had said nothing. I had decided to stay silent
and furious. Nevertheless, it wouldn’t have taken a genius to read my expression.

‘Your mother and I have bought a house in Ballsbridge. As soon as the sale of this one is through, we’re on our way.’ His dismissiveness only served to feed my rage. I have
never accepted anyone else’s control over my life.

‘You’ll get used to it,’ he said. ‘It’s not the dark side of the moon, you know. You can still see your friends.’

I looked over at my mother, the original Helicopter. She fought my father from time to time, but always gave in in the end. Her attitude was a partly combative, but mostly resigned martyrdom.
Perhaps it came from being so much younger than he was. Such a relationship requires careful management, guile and insight – none of which my mother possessed. And so, my father was
resplendent in his ownership of her. He had once boomed jovially to his cronies over drinks in our front room one Christmas how he had ‘got’ my mother ‘while she was still young
and pliable’. I can still feel how the sudden silence that resulted crawled all over my skin, making me want to slink away somewhere and cower in the darkness. But I stayed, hoping with a
forlorn hope that this time, she would answer him and show some spirit. She did not. And he remained oblivious. The guests first looked down at their glasses and then at each other.

I can only have been about ten at that time, but I have never forgotten the feeling of vicarious humiliation. Before or since, I don’t think I ever heard my mother express any opinion
voluntarily – one that wasn’t extracted as a result of my father’s stern ‘Well, Caroline? Is it or is it not so?’ Just as he did now.

Her tone was weary. What little fight might have been left in her seemed to have disappeared. ‘You’ll settle, Georgina, you’ll see. And you can always have your friends to
stay.’ Then she lit another cigarette and looked out of the window.

I left the sitting room in a rush, ran down the hallway and slammed the front door behind me as hard as I could. It was the most eloquent statement I could think of making in the midst of my
impotence. I could feel the windows shake behind me. Maggie was waiting for me at the end of her street, ten minutes’ walk away. She was sitting on one of the low whitewashed walls, swinging
her legs. The O’Tooles’ garden was always the neighbourhood meeting-point for us teenagers – something that made the new owners furious. They were not called O’Toole, but it
didn’t matter to us: that’s how the corner house would always be known. That Saturday afternoon, we were the first to arrive, Maggie and I.

Without preamble, I said ‘We’re moving.’ I was aware that my jaw was clenched.

Maggie looked at me, not understanding at first.

‘We’re moving to fucking Ballsbridge. They have the house up for sale.’

Her smile faded. She eased herself off the wall, stumbling in the process. Her backside grazed the pebble-dashing, dislodging flakes of paint. She brushed at the seat of her jeans, then wiped
her hands on her denim-clad thighs before she spoke.

‘When did they tell you?’

‘Just now.’ I remember angrily biting back tears, drawing blood in the process. I could taste its warm, coppery tinge on my tongue.

‘When will you be going?’ She was already pulling the packet of ten Carrolls out of her pocket. We were in the safe zone. Nobody from either house could see us, not even by
telescope. Or radar. Or satellite. Thus we habitually reassured each other, fifteen-year-old technological sophisticates.

I shrugged. ‘They didn’t give me a date. I didn’t ask. Whenever the house is sold, I suppose. I dunno – however long that takes.’

Then she smiled. ‘Ballsbridge is not so far. I mean, it’s not Cork, or anything. We can still meet at weekends. It doesn’t have to change things.’

I felt grateful, hopeful almost. But I wasn’t going to let her soothe my rage at my parents. I relished the purity of my wrath, my indignant response to injustice. ‘It
will
change things, you know it will.’

‘Not unless you let it,’ Maggie said. ‘Come on,’ she urged, and made her way towards the green space. I followed, surprised at her matter-of-factness. We sat under the
huge beech tree, the grass still warm and fragrant of late August. She pulled a cigarette out of her packet of ten, split the white paper cylinder up the centre and spilled commas of tobacco into
the palm of her hand. Then she reached back into her jeans pocket and pulled out a tiny parcel of silver paper and a pack of Rizlas. I watched as she expertly rolled a joint. This, I knew, was
Paul’s doing. Four years older than us, already a student at Trinity. Maggie’s big brother had always treated us as equals, taught us many things we were eager to know, and more than
likely shouldn’t have.