At a Time Like This (20 page)

Then she lit up. I noticed that her fingernails were more bitten than usual, some of them topped with bloody streaks where she had nipped and nibbled at the flesh. The nails were so short they
seemed to be growing inwards and downwards, embedding themselves back into the roots they had come from. It must have taken a huge effort of will to kill that habit. Maggie told me afterwards that
she’d stopped biting her nails as soon as she left home: a conscious effort to show outwardly what her new freedom had brought her. Pride, self-esteem, relief. From what I can remember, at
that time Paul was getting ready to repeat his exams and there was trouble in Maggie’s household. Her parents had never tolerated failure of any kind.

‘I wish they’d leave him alone,’ she’d said to me earlier that week. Her distress was palpable. ‘He’s studying for
hours
every day. Nothing’s
ever
enough for them.’

She adored her brother, and he her. For a moment, I wanted to ask how
she
was doing in the middle of all of that. But the enormity of my own loss took over and I let the moment pass.

Now she offered me the joint, holding her breath for the dope’s maximum impact. I took it, although I didn’t crave dope the way some of the others did. I’ve never liked the way
I can’t measure its effects. I’ve indulged, of course. What student didn’t? But I’ve always preferred my substances legal and predictable. There is no moral judgement in
that: it’s simply that you can’t have a bad trip on a few glasses of wine. It’s much easier to stay in control.

I took one drag and handed the joint back to her. ‘I hate this,’ I said. ‘It’ll mean new school, new neighbours, the lot.’ As an only child, I believed that I had a
greater right to complain than most. After all, I had no one to share things with in the furtive sanctuary of a bedroom, or over cups of tea in the empty kitchen of an even emptier house.

‘What school will you be going to?’ she asked after an interval. Maggie was ever the pragmatist. She accepted the realities of life in the way I never could. Accepted them, and then
tried to fit her life around them without admitting defeat.

I shrugged, still angry. ‘Dunno. They haven’t told me yet.’

‘We’re not babies, Georgie. They can’t stop us meeting, staying over and stuff. It doesn’t have to change any of our plans, not unless you want it to.’ There was
the glint of challenge in Maggie’s green eyes. My father’s rise and rise in recent years, his designation as ‘developer’ rather than ‘builder’ had begun to drive
a wedge between me and my old neighbours. He was seen variously as someone becoming too big for his boots, or getting above his station, or running away with himself – we Irish have countless
phrases for people who dare to put their head above the appropriate socially defined parapet. Not that I had any respect for my father’s dealings at that time. I didn’t. Nevertheless,
even then I was acutely aware of the mass of contradictions that seethed between those who grasped at prosperity and held on to it, and those who aspired to do so but failed. Hence the origins of
begrudgery

So. Maggie’s tone made me angry. ‘What the fuck do you mean “if I want to”?’ What are you talking about?’

But she never got time to answer. We’d been so engrossed in our exchange that neither of us had noticed the Guard – or Bean Garda, as I think we still called them back in those days
– who now materialized beside us. We both froze, Maggie with the joint halfway to her lips.

‘I’ll take that,’ said the uniformed young woman, holding out her hand towards the joint. Talk about a smoking gun. Maggie handed it over without a word. ‘What’s
your name?’

Maggie told her. ‘And your address?’ She wrote busily.

Then she looked at me. ‘And you are?’ she said, turning to a new page in her notebook.

‘Georgina White,’ I said, my heart hammering. Great, I was thinking. Perfect timing. Talk about giving my parents an excuse to ground me for life. Now the house move would be not
just a financial, but a moral imperative in order to safeguard my well-being. I could have kicked myself.

‘It’s nuttin’ to do wi’ her,’ Maggie said.

I looked at her in surprise. Her accent had fallen by about a dozen notches – it was pure Dublin. Even her stance was insolent, her normal posture replaced by an inner-city slouch.

‘Oh?’ the Garda raised her eyebrows, looking over at me, deeply suspicious. At the same time, I could see her hesitate. I could almost see her thinking: all that paperwork . . . She
could hardly have ignored Maggie, caught as she was in flagrante. But I was a different matter.

‘Yeah,’ said Maggie, loudly, drawing the attention back to herself. She rummaged in her jeans pocket and handed over her silver-wrapped booty. ‘She’s a sap. She
didn’t even wanna try i’.’

The Guard looked from one of us to the other. ‘Where do you live?’ she asked me. I told her and she nodded. ‘Is what Margaret says true?’

I could feel Maggie’s glare. ‘Yes,’ I said, my accent pointedly different from hers. I felt shame descend like a shroud, spilling over my head, settling about my feet.

‘Go home,’ the Guard advised me.

‘Yeah,’ said Maggie. ‘Go home. Ya sap.’

I turned and fled. I wept my way across the green, stumbled home blinded by tears of rage and guilt and self-pity. Maggie got into terrible trouble that night. She was brought to the Garda
station, her parents were called, she was given an official warning. She felt, she said, the full weight, the full Majesty of the Law. Even then, she mocked herself, with Frank O’Connor for
company. She had to report to the Junior Liaison Officer, she said, every week for six months. And she had to help out at the local youth club, something she took to with surprising alacrity.

‘Some chance I have of getting up to any mischief she said, when school resumed a few days later. She said it with a weak grin. ‘I’m grounded till I’m thirty – if
I’m lucky. I’ll see nothing but my bedroom, the cop shop and a ping-pong table built for two.’

There was an awkward silence between us for a moment. My freedom from punishment, from the consequences of my own behaviour, filled the spaces between us.

‘I rang but your dad wouldn’t let me talk to you,’ I said. This was true. But I also knew that I could have called to the door if I hadn’t been too cowardly to do so.

‘See what I mean?’ she said, lightly. ‘Grounded and incommunicado.’

‘Why did you do it?’ I asked her.

She shrugged. ‘What was the point of both of us ending up in the shite? Besides, this way, I figure you owe me.’ She was laughing at me.

I felt the most tremendous burden lifting from around my heart. I grinned back at her, filling up with love. ‘You can bet on it,’ I said. ‘For ever. I won’t
forget.’

And I meant it.

Later that year, I did move house and school, but Maggie and I never lost touch. I made the running. I felt it was the least I could do. My duty, my promise. Despite all the
times I’d got her into trouble, when the tables were turned, her only instinct was to save my skin. And so, I feel responsible for her, for her wellbeing.

How could I feel otherwise?

7.
Claire

It has just come to me that next December, I’ll be the same age as my mother was when she abandoned us. I’ll be forty-four years old. Another birthday on the
horizon and that makes me wonder how many more I’ll have. The thought depresses me. I don’t like thinking that I have a sell-by date ticking away somewhere inside me like yet another
biological time bomb that’s waiting to explode.

It’s strange, the way the four of us hardly ever talk about getting older. Sometimes I wonder if we’ve
ever
talked about the things that are important, particularly over the
last few years. Well, Maggie and I have, of course. I trust her. But Georgie’s grown too cynical of late and Nora – well, Nora’s life is very different from mine. She means well,
but she has become a little too smug for any of my confidences.

I’ll never forget her compassion towards me. Maggie, that is. There are still days, all these years later, when I burn with shame over how I hurt her. I can plead all the reasons I like,
make all the excuses I like, but what I did was still wrong. For once, I’m with Nora. And now my forty-fourth birthday is the final marker, I think. No more chances. That chapter of my life
will finally be closed.

Ray, of course, will be forty-five on the same day. That’s how everything started between us on that night. He insisted that he wanted us to celebrate our shared birthday together. I hate
December and have hated it in triplicate ever since I was twelve years of age. For being the month I was born, for being the month of Christmas, for being the month my mother abandoned us. And,
later on, for being the month when John Lennon died, but that’s a given.

I had just been to the magazine’s annual Christmas party in the Conrad Hotel. It had been one of those awful nights of forced jollity when everyone had to turn up wearing their shiniest
new outfit and their widest smile. I was not in the mood, particularly on that evening. But being the editor brought some social responsibilities with it, and the Christmas endurance test happened
to be one of them. I did my duty, stayed till ten o’clock and then slipped away. By then, the party was beginning to get a bit raucous. It was time to go home and I hoped that nobody had
noticed me leave. I made my way down the stairs. I’ve always avoided the lift on these occasions because I hate being forced to share a cramped space with someone who might be a little too
full of Christmas spirit.

‘Claire!’

I heard a man’s voice, familiar, but out of context. I half-turned, expecting to see some journalist or other running after me and insisting that I come back and rejoin the party. Or
worse, someone from the office with a complaint and enough alcohol on board to have the courage to voice it.

‘I
thought
it was you!’

It took me a moment. ‘Ray!’ I was relieved.

‘What are you doing in this neck of the woods?’ He was beaming.

‘Christmas party. Upstairs. But I’m sneaking away early’

He leaned towards me, and his expression was conspiratorial. ‘Good idea,’ he said. ‘I promise I won’t tell. I’m sick of Christmas cheer myself and we’ve still
got more than three weeks to go.’

I smiled at that. He gestured towards the bar. ‘Listen, I’m just finishing up here. Let me grab my coat and I’ll walk out with you.’

‘No, please, it’s . . .’ But he was already gone. Part of me wanted to hurtle out the door, to rush off into the night and leave him standing there on his own. I really
didn’t want his company, anybody’s company. Not on that night. I’ve wished so many times over the years that I’d obeyed that gut instinct.

He was back almost at once. So quickly, in fact, that I wondered whether he’d been drinking alone. He seemed steady enough, but I knew from Maggie even back then that Ray had started
drinking a lot more than was good for him.

‘Let’s go somewhere a bit quieter,’ he said then, and placed his hand under my elbow as he began to steer me out the door. I stopped at the top of the steps and turned to face
him.

‘It’s Christmas, Ray, and it’s ten o’clock at night. There
is
nowhere quieter. Anyhow, I’m tired. I don’t mean to be rude, but all I want is a taxi to
take me home.’

‘Guaranteed. I’ll put you into one myself. But first, a drink – just the one – given the time of year that’s in it.’

I should have insisted. I should have pointed out all the contradictions he had already mentioned about the season and the burden of cheer it brought with it. But as I said, I was tired. Too
tired even to argue. He brought us into a nearby pub that was much quieter than I expected. He winked at me.

‘See? Leave it to Ray. You can usually get a seat in here,’ he said. ‘It’s not trendy enough for the younger crowd and it’s too trendy for the oldies. Come on, let
me take your coat.’

I let him. I sat down.

‘Back in a mo’.’

He disappeared at once towards the bar. I closed my eyes, trying to block out the events of the day. I wanted them to slip away from me. I went looking for forgetfulness in the dark. When I
opened my eyes again, Ray was putting an ice bucket on the table. Inside, up to its neck in ice-cubes, was a bottle of champagne.

‘Ray!’ I said. ‘What on earth are you doing!’

He eased the cork out of the bottle. The sound stilled the conversations at the bar for a moment and all heads turned in our direction. Then it started up again as though nothing much had
happened.

He grinned. ‘I think I remember that you and I have a significant date in common. Let’s celebrate
that
instead of Christmas. Seems like much more fun.’ He handed me a
flute, half-filled with froth. ‘Here’s to birthdays. I’m a gentleman so I’ll just mention that I’m thirty-five on Thursday next and I know that you are a good deal
younger. Cheers.’ And he raised his glass.

I had to laugh at that. The bitterness of the sound was audible even to me. ‘Oh, yes – there’s all of a year between us.’

‘Come on,’ he urged. ‘Raise your glass. To shared birthdays.’

What can I say? I raised my glass. And I raised it again and again and again.

I don’t want to remember all the gory details. And ‘remember’ is not an accurate word anyhow. What remains of that night is burned on to my hard disk. It plays and replays with
an accuracy that I can only describe as forensic, every time I let my guard down. I don’t need to try to recall all that happened. I need to make no effort at all. The details leap out of
their own accord, each one tumbling after the other. A whole regiment of parachutists determined to capture enemy territory. They scorch their path into heart and soul as they go.

Yes, I was tired, yes, I was lonely, yes, I was despondent. Yes and yes and yes again. It should have made no difference. Maggie was my friend, is my friend, and she was entitled to better, far
better, from me. For more than two years afterwards, she wouldn’t speak to me. We four no longer met – at least, not as a group. Georgie and I used to, and I’d get a phone call
from Nora fairly regularly. But I always dreaded her calls. I felt badly enough myself and Nora was too honest to pretend to feel other than she did, although she said her piece kindly enough. I
avoided her because I needed no more reminders of the awfulness of what I had done.