At a Time Like This (6 page)

‘You okay?’ Paul’s kisses paused for a moment. The liquid pleasure that we’d been swimming in for what seemed like hours was suspended gently around us.
‘Happy?’

‘Oh, yes,’ I said, pulling him closer. I remember feeling that I would never be able to pull him close enough. ‘Happy and happy and happy some more.’

It must have been some time around four in the morning. The whole house had grown silent. I couldn’t even hear Marvin Gaye any more. Strangely, my bedroom seemed to have grown brighter and
I remember that I took that as an omen. I know now of course that my eyes had just grown used to the dark. But I didn’t know that at the time. I was thrilled that Paul and I could see each
other, that our faces were real and warm rather than shapes shifting in and out of the shadows. I know that I had been thinking,
this is so nice
– and then stopped myself, remembering
Georgie’s rules about lazy adjectives, no matter what the . . .

But I never got to finish my thought. Suddenly, I gasped, slammed from drowsy arousal, from sensual restfulness into full-on, wide-awake wonder. Paul’s fingers were inside me again, but
this time, they made me feel powerfully alert and alive in a way I had never been before.

‘What are you doing to me?’ I whispered, my heart hammering, my soul racing, my mind speeding. My new, eighteen-year-old body was caught in a clutch of delight I had never even
imagined, could never begin to imagine. All my nerve endings seemed to flood, to flush with heat and feeling. I no longer knew myself.

Paul leaned forward and took one nipple between his teeth, rolling the other between thumb and forefinger until I thought I might be just about to faint.

‘I think I’ve found the switch,’ he said. ‘That’s what I’m doing to you. I’ve just turned you on. Sergeant Pepper would approve, don’t you
think?’ And he slid away from me and bit me, gently. Ever so gently. ‘I told you you could trust me, didn’t I?’

But by that stage, I was beyond speech.

I had never known it could be so easy: such fluent matching of bodies, of tongues and hands and legs and arms. There had been no awkwardness here, no fumbling at my bra, no hot breath on the
back of my neck and no painful surprises with teeth and jagged fingernails. No. Paul was all easy movement, his hands tender and sure. He had surprised me, that first night. I’d been prepared
for pain, discomfort and at the very least some unpleasantness. But there was nothing. Nothing but pleasure.

Sleep had become impossible. I lay as the dawn light filtered through the grimy curtains that had once been tweed, although I couldn’t make out what the original shade was supposed to have
been. We lay like spoons, Paul’s arm over my shoulder, his hand cupping one grateful breast. A small, white breast; long, square fingers; the dip and swell of our thighs under a blue blanket.
I wished that my eye could be a camera.

I couldn’t stop myself thinking of Kate, of how right she had been about so many things. There
is
life after whatever the shit is that happens to you. But this was beyond Rioja and
Craven A, beyond the sad lace curtains of a country kitchen and self-knowledge that was hard won, hard bought. Now, I thought, at last:
now
I understand my mother. This was love. And I
wanted it. No, more than that, I craved it and needed it and breathed it in like oxygen.

And yes, I wanted its madness, too, perhaps. Although I was aware of its clear and present dangers. Or thought I was.

But when has that ever stopped us?

2.
Georgie

And now, outside, the day’s blue light is already slanting away from my balcony. Volterra has just begun to recede into the evening, sliding towards night. A low-key
murmur begins in the grasses below. How do I describe it? As shrill droning or musical chirping? I can’t tell any more, because I’ve just decided to close my windows against the
possibility of mosquitoes. I don’t entirely trust the screens. Anyway, who cares? Even if the windows
were
open, I couldn’t tell the difference between a cicada and a cricket.
They tell me that one colonizes the afternoons, the other the evenings. But one bug is very much the same as another, in my eyes, even in Tuscany. Especially so if they bite.

Tuscany, indeed. I can hear Nora’s voice even at this distance, can discern all the nuances, can imagine her eyes ablaze with her customary indignation. I can see the three of them this
evening as they gather around the table. Maggie, Claire, Nora. My friends, my oldest friends; my very best friends in all the world. Nora will, of course, arrive first. Among her other uncanny
instincts is how to arrive just in time to interrupt a conversation belonging to other people.

‘Hope I’m not too early’ she’ll say, with the little tinkling laugh she has perfected over the years, the one that makes me grit my teeth. ‘Frank insisted on giving
me a lift, although I said “no”. But he said he didn’t want me catching cold.’ Neither Maggie nor Claire will exclaim over Frank’s sweetness in this instance –
nor in any other – so Nora will just raise her innocent eyebrows and ask: ‘Is everything okay?’

Claire will relent before Maggie, as she always does. Just as Maggie has always relented before I would. She, Claire that is, will offer her cheek to Nora and give her a warm, if brief, hug.
Maggie will do the same.

‘Of course everything is okay. Why shouldn’t it be?’ Claire will say.

But Maggie will have stayed silent, and Nora will have noticed. She’ll look from Maggie to Claire then, with those glittering eyes, that penetrating gaze she has when she suspects that
she’s being kept on the outside. ‘Maggie?’

Maggie will shrug and look down at her fingernails. I’ve told her often enough that such talons don’t suit her, but Maggie has held firm on this. She will have her vanities, even if
one or two of them are not very subtle ones. ‘It’s just that I haven’t heard from Georgie,’ she’ll say. ‘Neither has Claire. It’s probably nothing, but
I’m a little worried, that’s all.’

There will be a silence. To smooth over it, Claire will ask Nora: ‘Have
you
heard anything from her since the last time we met?’ Knowing, of course, that such a thing was
unheard of. Me? Contact Nora if I didn’t have to? Or even if I did? Nora will have the grace to realize the impossible kindness of Claire’s enquiry.

‘No,’ she’ll say. ‘No, I haven’t,’ in that tone of voice that implies she would discourage any such contact, even if it were forthcoming. Nora likes to take
the high moral ground, and pitch her tent there.

‘Well,’ Claire will say, ‘maybe she’s just been delayed. Let’s sit and chat for a while and just hope that she gets in touch. It’s not like her.’

And so the three of them will take their glasses into Claire’s new conservatory. They will sit among her fragrant plants and her tasteful water feature and her elegant, comfortable
furniture. The conversation at first will be quiet, intimate in the ways of people who know each other a long time, where silences are valued as much as speech. Then Nora will get going, convinced
that she is being deliberately kept in the dark. Sometimes she pouts, other times she lets her lip tremble.

‘You’re keeping something from me,’ she’ll say.

And Maggie and Claire will exchange one of those swift, intelligent glances: one of those in whose orbit I should be included – had I been there. Nora’s neediness will have demanded
a response. But I have noticed Claire’s increasing ability to handle our Nora, the last few times we’ve met. She has always got away with saying more than I ever could, given her gentle
tone. But there is a new firmness to her now, a willingness to stop Nora in her tracks if she threatens to disturb. Claire’s latest mantra when anything displeases her is that
‘life’s too short’.

‘Too short for what?’ Maggie asked her the last time we met, when it was just the delight of the three of us.

‘For putting up with crap,’ Claire replied, with uncharacteristic vehemence. Maggie looked quickly over at me, but neither of us said anything. We both suspected that there was a new
man in Claire’s life, but she was being very tight-lipped about him. Knowing Claire, we knew it was useless to ask. She’d tell us when she wanted to, or when it was over.

Anyway, her new philosophy meant that Saint Nora was permitted to hand down fewer and fewer judgements on the nights when the four of us met. But I doubt whether that will be the case this time.
I have no idea what Claire will say to appease Nora tonight. Particularly as Maggie’s unease is bound to grow throughout the evening, and Nora is gimlet-eyed when it comes to the emotional
upheavals of others, given that she has never experienced any herself. I feel badly about putting Maggie under the spotlight, but it can’t be helped. And there is always the fact that
Claire’s is the most soothing of all our households; the best, most comforting space for such small dramas to be played out.

I remember the first time that we, Maggie and I, arrived at Claire’s new home. We got there, by prior arrangement, an hour before the stated invitation. Nora had exhausted all of us the
last time we’d met – even patient Maggie – so we’d agreed that an hour together, just the three of us, was needed in order to fortify ourselves for the night ahead.
We’d done this from time to time before, particularly in the early days. I’d have taken it further and not included Nora at all, but the other two always voted me down. Something to do
with Nora’s loyalty and good-hearted-ness, and too many years and so much water under too many bridges. All clichés, as far as I was concerned, but I’d learned that that was one
battle I was just not going to win.

That first night, Claire’s new house was a revelation. I’d seen her talents before, when she worked with my father renovating his grubby flats all over Dublin. That was before they
became known as ‘apartments’. But this time, in her own home, she had surpassed herself. She had turned a cramped and smelly redbrick into something open and spacious and, perhaps this
is a strange thing to say, almost reverent in its clever use of light and natural materials. It made ‘House of the Month’ in the classiest of Ireland’s interior design magazines
at the time, whose name I no longer remember. Claire’s new home had the sort of hushed interior I had rarely come across – at least, not in Dublin. The walls were all cream, the stair
carpet a pale, muted colour, the tall windows filled with white, gauzy muslin. I remember that I admired the curve of the new brushed metal handle on her front door, the matching numbers. I’d
never seen anything quite like it before, was startled at its brash modernity against the serene Victorian lines of a solid front door. It took me a moment or two to decide that I liked it, liked
it a lot.

‘It’s new to this country’ she said. ‘I’ve just finished writing an article on door furniture for the
Irish Times
property supplement.’

I grinned at her. Claire was always up to date. Beyond up to date, in fact. She created a need for fashionable accessories where none had existed before. I have to say I admired her for it.

‘Georgie, you wouldn’t believe the range, these days,’ she said and she rolled her eyes up to heaven.

Something else I liked about her. She rarely took such things seriously – or, at least, did not take her expertise in such things too seriously. Claire was well aware of all the
infidelities of fashion. But her sense of style, her up-to-dateness, her knowledge of what was trendy and what was not, was never a show-off thing, never that compulsive
Look at all the things
I
know
or even,
Look at all the things I
have
that bedevilled many an evening for me, once Nora got into her stride. Luckily for me on that occasion, because Nora
hadn’t yet arrived, the door furniture conversation never got a chance to develop. Just as well, or we’d all have been catapulted into a full-blown treatise on chrome polish, wipe-down
surfaces, watching paint dry.

And so the three of them will sit together this evening, in my notable absence, talking of other things. Something or someone will eventually break the spell. A phone call, perhaps, or an
inappropriate observation from Nora. Perhaps a sharp reproof from Maggie, my most ‘loyal opposition’ as I once called her, given that she both supports me and challenges me on so many
fronts at once. Who knows what the catalyst will be? What I do know is that tonight will be one of those times that is both an ending and a beginning. My absence will quickly become a presence,
something to be confronted, its bones picked over, its carcass finally buried before the funeral party moves on.

Imagining them all tonight, Dublin seems light years away, almost as though my old life there has never existed. Or perhaps,
has
existed but in some hazy universe that keeps a parallel
course with the one we call the real world. My connections to it have already begun to fade. And that is the feeling I get every time I come to Tuscany: that it is possible to walk out of your life
and not miss it. To become a whole other person with different needs and attitudes and ambitions.

Like Claire from Clare, who blossomed in the most unexpected ways once she left both home and family behind. I’ve never told her this, but the first time I saw her, I was stunned. It was
Freshers’ Week in Trinity and we met at the English Society stand in Front Square. Over a quarter of a century ago. We were both about to become Junior Freshmen and I can still recall my own,
studied nonchalance. But Claire’s fear was so transparent that I took pity on her. With that glorious red hair, pale skin and wide blue eyes, she looked like a saint about to be martyred. I
remember that the Secretary of the English Society couldn’t keep his eyes off her. He was a nerdy guy, as young people today would say, but on that occasion, his jaw dropped so much I had to
warn him against catching flies. Or wasps, or some such other nonsense.

Boudicca, Paul used to call her, as I remember. After the flame-haired warrior queen, he said. I looked her up, Boudicca, that is, once I heard him make the comparison between her and Claire.
‘Tall and terrifying’, according to the Greek historian Dio Cassius; ‘a great mass of red hair fell over her shoulders’. I could never have called Claire
‘terrifying’, not in the warlike way that Cassius meant. I don’t think that Claire has ever hurt a fly – well, perhaps once, but that was without meaning to. But she did
arouse strong emotions in all who came across her. Sometimes envy, sometimes resentment, often admiration. She had a fine eye for individual style even then. She wore flowing dresses, mostly in
shades of green, huge gilded bangles and torc-like necklaces. But I don’t think she ever realized the full, silent charge of her impact. Or if she did, she had a wonderful knack of hiding it.
I’ve seen her on late nights, or very early mornings; sleepy or tipsy, withdrawn or confiding, and she’s always the same. Serene, composed, even Madonna-like: the very opposite of what
we perceive glamour to be.