At a Time Like This (2 page)

‘Have a nice flight,’ she says. But I hear ‘Have a nice life.’

Will I? I wonder. It’s not too late to pull back, to go home, to pretend that this is the result of a momentary madness. It’s strange, this sudden tension I feel between wanting and
not wanting. I feel the pull of old intimacies, followed almost at once by the push of alienation. I think about tonight at Claire’s, with Maggie and Nora. Of course I won’t be with
them: I have chosen not to be with them. But I’d love to
be
there, nevertheless: a presence, a shimmery ghost sliding in and out among the chairs, finally settling at the one empty
place, listening.

So. I can see the contours of their evening spread out before me already, like a well-worn pattern, undemanding, easy to follow. I might need to make the occasional nip here, a cautionary tuck
there, but by and large, I have the evening’s measure. Of course, I do accept that I shall never really know: instead, I’ll have to be content with imagining. And I shall miss that
knowing, miss those comfortable, predictable endings. I’ll raise my glass to them all this evening and take great pleasure in this, our final gathering.

I buy a newspaper, coffee. I settle into the traveller’s sport of waiting.

Georgie, Porgie, pudding and pie. Kissed the boys and made them cry.

Well, let’s see who’s crying now.

1.
Claire

I can still remember the day we met, as though it was only yesterday. The day that changed everything. The day after which things were never the same again, not for me,
anyhow.

I saw her first in Front Square. She was tall, fair-haired, standing very straight. That day, she had her hair up, and I admired her long neck and the silver earrings she wore. They caught the
light, like fish gleaming silver under water. Her presence was commanding: that was the first word that came to mind. Even back then, even as a teenager, she had that air of ownership that
continues to define her as Georgie.

She was talking away to a guy seated at one of the Freshers’ Week tables and from where I was standing, I could tell that she was giving him a hard time. He looked as though he was trying
to disappear under the scarred wooden surface, or at least, to hide further behind it. I could see that he wanted to be somewhere both safer and quieter. That spindly table reminded me of primary
school, of copy-books smelling of chalk dust and low-ceilinged rooms filled with books and certainties.

‘Well?’ the girl who would soon become Georgie asked for the second time, just as I approached. Except that it sounded more like a demand than a request. She pulled a leaflet from
the bundle in front of her. ‘What other reasons could there possibly be for joining?’ Her voice was crystal, full of confidence. It made me conscious of my culchie origins. I decided
I’d better keep my mouth shut.

The young man began to fumble with the leaflets, tidying them. It was an attempt, and not a very effective one at that, to try to ward her off. He was really doing his best to show his
authority. But he didn’t have a chance. Strangely for me, I didn’t feel the least bit sorry for him. I remember thinking that he was almost a caricature with that shabby tweed jacket,
those heavy black spectacles and a row of cheap biros straining from his breast pocket. ‘Eng. Lit. Soc.’ was stapled crookedly across the pitted wood in front of him. I took one
decisive step forward, surprising myself. I’d never been much of a joiner before, but somehow this girl’s brashness gave me courage. The world owed her and she knew it. Maybe, just by
my being with her, it might realize that it owed me, too.

‘Hello,’ Georgie said, sensing my presence. Then she turned to look at me. No, she
really
looked at me, as though she was interested in what she was seeing.

‘Hello.’ I didn’t know whether I felt disconcerted or pleased.

Her gaze swept over me. Head to toe. No attempt to hide her appraisal. ‘Pure English?’

I shook my head. ‘No,’ I said, trying not to let the Clare cadences slip through. (I know, I know, Claire from Clare. I’ve heard that joke a million times and do you know,
everyone who makes it believes that they are the first to have thought of it.) ‘Not Pure English. I’m doing French as well.’

She nodded, her blue eyes unblinking. ‘My name’s Georgina, but everyone calls me Georgie.’

‘I’m Claire. Nice to meet you.’ I wasn’t exactly sure what we were supposed to do next. Shake hands or something? I decided that I’d take my cue from her.

‘Shall we go ahead and join and put this guy out of his misery?’ The young man sitting behind the wobbly table hadn’t said a word throughout our conversation, and now he looked
from one of us to the other. His head was like one of those nodding dogs you see in the backs of cars – except that his nod was horizontal, rather than vertical.

‘I should close my mouth if I were you,’ Georgina – Georgie – advised him. ‘Lots of wasps dying, this time of year. You could get stung.’ She signed her name
with a flourish and handed me the pen. I did the same.

Everyone calls me Georgie.

I remember how struck I was by her comfort inside her own skin, her familiarity with
Everyone.

‘Been to the Buttery yet?’ she asked, hoisting her rucksack over one shoulder.

I shook my head. ‘No. I’ve only just arrived.’

‘Fancy a coffee? Or a tea?’ she added hurriedly.

I suspected that there had to be only one right answer here, and I already knew that I knew what it was. Coffee (urban, sophisticated); tea (provincial, dull). As it happened, I have never liked
tea, tea and sympathy. But still, my answer made me feel like a fraud. ‘Yeah. Coffee’d be good,’ I said. We crossed Front Square and made our way down the Buttery steps.

‘Your accent is lovely,’ Georgie said. ‘Where are you from?’

‘Ennistymon. County Clare,’ I added, in case she hadn’t heard of Ennistymon.

‘I know Ennistymon well,’ she said. ‘And Kilkee. And Doolin. My last boyfriend was a traditional music nut.’

Her
last
boyfriend?

Somehow, I knew that Georgie’s experience of boyfriends was the real thing: cool, sexy, grown-up. I bet she’d have lifted her well-defined eyebrows if she knew anything about my
couple of blunderers. I thought of Jamesie’s shy, adolescent fumblings, the hopeless tangle of his fingers in my bra straps.

By then, I was really hooked. Georgie’s ease with the world was seductive. It helped, too, that she’d been to Doolin. She’d crossed into my territory, and that somehow expanded
my small childhood world and gave my home place a measure of significance. ‘And you?’ I asked. ‘Where are you from?’

She opened the glass door to the Buttery, waving me in ahead of her. She grinned. ‘Oh,’ she said, ‘I’m from the centre of the universe. Ballsbridge.’

I said nothing. What was I missing here? What secret language was I not able to speak?

‘Don’t worry,’ she said, ‘you’ll get it soon enough.’

It was only when we were sitting down I realized that I hadn’t spoken those words aloud. ‘You read my mind,’ I said to her. The coffee was awful. It was weak and burnt-tasting
and bitter all at the same time. The tables were crowded and the blue air was humming with cigarette smoke and conversation. A dumpy, bad-tempered woman with misapplied orange lipstick swept by us.
Her greying hair was curled tight and angry: an exact match for her face. She loaded dirty crockery on to a trolley, but not before she glared at us and swiped at the table with a less than clean
cloth. We waited until she’d moved along before we dared to speak again.

Georgie made a face. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I’ll have to stop doing that. It makes people nervous.’

‘Does it always work?’

She shook her head, tucking a strand of fair hair behind her ear. ‘No. But your expression said it all. It was easy to know what you were thinking.’

I decided right then that I liked her.

‘Can I ask you something?’ Georgie said, pushing her cup away from her. She didn’t wait for me to answer. I liked that, too. ‘Your hair. Is it . . . naturally like
that?’

I wasn’t sure what she meant. ‘The colour?’

She shrugged. ‘Everything – the colour, the curls, the . . . exuberance. The whole deal.’ She nodded at me, waiting.

I sensed that something hung on my reply. I wasn’t sure what it could be, but I was taking no chances, not with this girl. The truth, the whole truth. Nothing but the truth.

‘Yeah,’ I said. ‘It’s naturally like this. It’s mine. All mine.’ And I tugged at a curl above my right ear, just to prove it. I decided that today I could be
whoever I wanted to be, miles and miles from Clare. ‘My mother’s legacy. She abandoned us for the local doctor when I was twelve. I shaved all my hair off when I found out, and when it
grew back, it looked just like this.’ I waited. This was where
I’d
decide.

Poor little lambs, and they so young. And Claire’s so like her mother. Same shape face, same slender frame, and now, with that mane of red hair . . .

Would Georgie be curious? Shocked? Would she, too, define me by my mother?

‘It’s stunning,’ she said, shaking her head slowly. ‘Absolutely stunning. I’d say that Eng. Lit. guy still has his mouth open.’ She pulled a packet of twenty
Carrolls from the side pocket of her rucksack.

I remember thinking: how extravagant.

‘Smoke?’ she asked, offering me one.

I accepted. I rejoiced. I inhaled. The right answer, I thought, as I savoured a blast of nicotine and delight. She’d chosen the right answer.

And that was how Georgie and I met. After a whole miserable month of getting lost on my own in Dublin, I felt, finally, that I’d found a way home. I’ll go further
and say that I dated the beginning of my grown-up life from the minute that Georgie offered me one of her cigarettes.

Being with Georgie changed everything. The College lawns were greener, the sky looked bluer, kinder. It was as though someone had just adjusted the focus. The picture shimmered into clarity. It
felt as if I had just met, and instantly recognized, myself. My other, more assured, more daring self. The one I hadn’t met before and whose existence I had never even suspected.

‘Where are you staying?’ Georgie asked, as we climbed the steps from the Buttery and made our way towards the New Arts Block. We’d decided to check out the English Department,
to see what our timetables were like for the following week, when Michaelmas term would begin. Despite myself, despite my wariness of elitism, and urban sophistication, I loved the names. I loved
the oldness of everything, the shabby, ruddy splendour of the Rubrics, the gnarled ancientness of trees.

‘In Rathfarnham,’ I said. ‘In digs, with a friend of my aunt’s. Just until I find my feet,’ I added, aware that I’d just sounded old-fashioned.

Georgie looked at me. ‘How long do you have to stay there?’ she asked, having seen right through me.

‘Until Christmas,’ I replied miserably. Such safety, such predictability already felt like a prison sentence. I knew that I’d found my feet now and that Georgie would keep me
grounded.

‘I have a place in Rathmines,’ she said. ‘I’ll be sharing with Maggie. We’ve been friends for ever. You’ll like her.’

‘I’m sure I will,’ I said.

‘There’s room for three, but so far, there’s only the two of us. Someone else let us down. Her parents made her stay at home for first year.’ Georgie settled her rucksack
again. There was an unmistakable ripple of irritation as she did so.

I was very glad that it was the other girl Georgie was mad at, and not me.

She continued. ‘Apparently, if you live at home for first year, you’re safe. You won’t have
any
opportunity to have sex. Did you know that?’

I laughed. ‘I think that you should talk to my dad.’

Georgie looked at me, interested. And I remember thinking:
she’s
interested in what
I
might have to say?

‘Go on, then,’ she said.

I shrugged. ‘Well, d’ye know, where I come from, nothing bad ever happens before midnight. Be home by ten, and you’ll never be a pumpkin.’

The blue gaze stayed level. She waited.

‘It means you can hang on to your virginity for ever. My father calls it “The Cinderella Syndrome”. He says it’s absurd.’ He did indeed say that, but I wasn’t
sure he’d have expressed it as boldly as I’d just done. I was beginning not to recognize myself.

Georgie grinned at last. ‘A sound man, your father.’

I nodded. ‘Yeah, yeah, he is.’ And suddenly, I missed him. But why should I? He was the one who’d kicked me out, after all, the one who insisted I had to ‘spread my
wings’. I’d fought him, tired of always having to do those things that were supposed to be good for me. I can hear myself now. Why is it ‘good for me’ to have to do the
things that make me feel bad? To leave my friends? My home? My wings are quite happy as they are, thank you very much and I’ll spread them as much as I like. Home gives me enough room to
stretch, and, if we want to extend the metaphor, just enough to feel the bars of my cage if I push too hard.

But he wouldn’t listen. I tried to avoid it by using every trick in the book. I’d even hoped that fate and poor exam results might bring about a happy accident and let me stay where
I was. Local. Located. I prayed for a marriage between hope and circumstance: hopenstance. Well, happenstance is a word isn’t it? But it didn’t work.

And so, here I was. Standing in late September sunshine with the first person under forty years of age I’d spoken to in a month. Well, except for children, and they didn’t count, not
in the way I meant.

Georgie was looking thoughtful. ‘So, your father mightn’t mind you giving up your digs, then?’ she persisted. ‘We hope to move into the flat at the beginning of November.
That’s almost five weeks away,’ I could feel her watching me. ‘What do you say? Long enough to convince the old man, do you think?’

I smiled. ‘Old man’ he was not. Not in any sense. ‘Yeah,’ I said, feeling brave. ‘I’ll talk to him at the weekend. When would you need to know?’

Georgie shrugged. ‘Two weeks? If you can’t take the room, we’ll need to look for someone else.’