At a Time Like This (8 page)

‘What were you thinking about, for fuck’s sake?’ Georgie was incandescent.

It was her birthday, right in the dog days of January. Now, I hadn’t quite invited Helly, not directly, but she had prised information out of me about what we three were up to at the
weekend. I’d left the details as vague as I could and just said that Georgie would be the one doing the inviting. Her birthday, her guests, that kind of thing. But Helly turned up anyway,
bringing a gift and flowers and wearing one of her brightest smiles.

I’d never seen Georgie so angry. I knew I needed to apologize, and fast. ‘I’m sorry – but she did kinda invite herself. I just let slip that it was happening, right? We
can’t tell her to go.’

We were in Georgie’s bedroom. She had just slammed the door on the party in the living room. Her eyes blazed. ‘Like fuck we can’t.’

I knew that she’d had a row with Danny – I’d heard her on the phone earlier – but she hadn’t told me that. I had to pretend not to know. Instead, she was trying to
make me believe that her rage was entirely due to Helly. I let her have her moment.

‘I
told yo
u I didn’t want her here. Christ knows, I put up with her every other time, but not tonight, please, just not tonight.’

Her temper reminded me of primary school, of the time when she’d got us both into trouble. We could only have been five or six at the time, just starting, I think, in Senior Infants. We
were sat at the red table, and Mrs McCarthy had arranged eight of us small girls in a circle with piles of coloured art paper, scissors and gum placed in front of us. Melissa McKee had been put
sitting between us and Georgie got really mad. She got up and marched across the classroom to where Mrs McCarthy was just starting to settle the next group of girls at the yellow table.

She tugged at the astonished teacher’s sleeve. ‘Can me and Maggie sit together?’

‘Maggie and I,’ corrected Mrs McCarthy automatically, before she realized what was happening. ‘Georgina!’ she said, when she’d recovered. ‘Please do not leave
your seat without permission. Now sit down and I’ll be over to you in a moment, once everybody here has what they need.’

But Georgie stood her ground. As patiently as any adult, she repeated her request. This time she added a ‘please’. Mrs McCarthy was matronly, slow to anger most days, but Georgie
must have hit a nerve. ‘Georgina,’ she began. But she never got to finish.

‘Maggie and me need to sit together because Melissa McKee . . . smells . . . of . . . wee.’ Clear as a bell. She’d even paused between each of the final words, so that they
sounded more dramatic.

There was silence, followed by some nervous titters from the yellow table. Then all hell broke loose. Mrs McCarthy shouted at Georgie, Melissa burst into tears and Georgie refused to sit down.
The upshot was that we were both sent to the Principal’s office – a bit unfairly, I’ve always thought, because I’d had no idea that Georgie was going to include me in her
rant. Although we had both agreed the day before that Melissa McKee did, indeed, smell of wee.

I think we each had to write a letter of apology to Melissa. How cruel children can be to each other. And it was that cruelty I remembered as Georgie stood there in her bedroom, now an
eighteen-year-old woman, but basically doing exactly the same thing all over again. The memory of Melissa’s pain was keen and I was not going to humiliate Helly She didn’t deserve it. I
banked on the fact that Georgie’s angers were usually short-lived.

‘Remember Melissa McKee?’ I said to her. ‘You got me a week’s double spellings for that caper. Remember?
And
extra tables! Now it’s payback time,
right?’

I watched as Georgie tried to puzzle it out. I let her. And I enjoyed the moment, I must admit. Her face cleared and then she cracked up. ‘Melissa McKee! I haven’t thought of her in
years! She smelt of wee!’

Soon we were clutching each other, helpless with laughter. Claire knocked on the door and called out ‘Hurry up, both of ye – people are arriving and I can hardly say ye’re off
havin’ a row.’

Georgie wiped away the tears, still erupting into hysterics every time she thought of poor little Melissa.

‘All right, just this once. The Helicopter stays. But no more Melissa McKee, okay?’

‘You have my solemn word,’ I told her. ‘The debt is now paid.’ Still giggling, we joined the party. And Georgie got over it.

That’s how our friendship has always been, right from the very beginning. Barter, blackmail from time to time, a bit of cajoling when necessary – usually done by me. In return, I got
the most generous friend, the most loyal, the fiercest defender of my corner that I have ever had. And given who I married, I’ve needed it. I have so many reasons to be thankful for
Georgie’s friendship.

It’s strange, but there’s one occasion that I keep coming back to and yet it wasn’t all that important, not in the scheme of things. I mean, there are lots of more significant
events that we’ve shared, she and I, if you were looking in from the outside. But this one time with Ray sums up the way Georgie looked out for me. It’s what the Trinity lecturers would
call ‘emblematic’, I think. Anyway, I was heavily pregnant with Gillian at the time and Eve was only thirteen months old. I was constantly tired. Maybe weary is a better word. Whatever.
All I know is, I wasn’t able to get up off the sofa. I felt as though my bones were melting and the only thing I wanted to do was sleep.

Ray was not the greatest of husbands when I was pregnant. To be honest, he wasn’t the greatest of husbands when I
wasn’t
pregnant, either, but it’s amazing the things
you can learn to live with when you have to. On the evening in question, I knew that Ray would be late home. He’d just been named ‘Salesman of the Year’ again, and there was,
naturally, a celebration in the pub after work. Ray was one of those people who could sell sand to the Arabs, snow to the Eskimos. He was born to it. He’d rung me earlier in the day,
cock-a-hoop, to tell me of his success. I was pleased for him, of course I was, but I was also uneasy. Ray was drinking up a storm in those days and with me pregnant, it was as though all the
controls were off. And I no longer had the energy to fight him.

‘Don’t wait up, Doll,’ he said to me over the phone. That was his nickname for me whenever he was feeling particularly pleased with things. Not necessarily with me, just with
things in general. ‘Have yourself an early night: expect me when you see me.’

I tried to get a word in, tried to plead with him to go easy. I wasn’t asking for abstinence, or anything like that, just moderation. But he had already hung up. Ray always had the happy
knack of knowing what I was going to say next.

I have no clear idea of what happened as the evening wore on. I only have what Ray told me afterwards, because Georgie never volunteered anything about it. According to him, and he told me this
in a tone that was half-amazed, half-enraged, Georgie had been in Searson’s with her cousin, Roberta – Bobbie – when Ray and his work buddies arrived at around six o’clock.
At his insistence, she and Bobbie stayed to have a drink to celebrate his award and then they left to go to dinner. Georgie came back at around half-past ten, on her own. By that stage, my guess is
that the party had thinned out a lot, but Ray would never admit that. He insisted that there were still four or five left from his department, that of course he couldn’t leave until they did.
I said nothing. I just calculated the effect of four and a half hours of steady drinking on an empty stomach. Ray would have been feeling no pain by then, and the party would have been kept going
by him. I’ve seen it all before, too many times. His rationalizations and I are old, if mistrustful, friends by now.

I never asked who the other ‘four or five’ were, either. That was Ray’s careful way of not telling me that at least one of them was a woman. Whatever. According to himself,
this is what happened next: the barman came over and tapped him on the shoulder.

‘Phone call for you in the bar, sir.’

‘Really?’ said Ray. He said he was surprised, although he can’t have been, not totally. Searson’s was a well-known drinking-haunt of his. He probably stumbled out to the
phone, although that’s not how he tells it, and there stood Georgie. No phone call, just Georgie. I can imagine her expression, and I can also imagine my husband’s. Apparently, she got
right to the point.

‘My car’s outside the door,’ said Georgie. ‘I’m giving you a lift home.’

He said he told her he wasn’t ready. Then, according to him, she said, ‘Party’s over, Ray. We’re leaving now.’ There must be a bit in the middle that he
hasn’t told me. Maybe he weighed up the options of throwing a strop in a public place against the impact of being seen leaving with a woman like Georgie. Maybe the barman refused to serve
him. Whatever. The way Ray likes to tell it, he waved to the others and left. He might even have pretended to be amused. He gets like that when he’s been drinking: he either feels amused by
everything or belligerent about everything. One way or the other, I suspect he was so shocked that he did what he was told.

Do I imagine a barman grinning in the background? Work colleagues annoyed, or maybe relieved, that he left so abruptly and never went back? Maybe, maybe not. All I know is that I awoke to the
sound of Ray’s key in the front door – he took a moment or two to get in – and the sight of Georgie’s tail-lights disappearing down the street just as I reached the
porch.

I rang her the next day. The least I wanted to do was acknowledge what she had done. And, of course, I was curious. But she gave nothing away when I thanked her.

‘Not at all,’ she said, with the ease of a practised liar. ‘I was going your way anyway and I could see that Ray needed a lift.’

We never mentioned it again. We didn’t need to. I felt ashamed, grateful and sorrowful all at once. Georgie’s ferocious personality made me wonder, not for the first time, if she
would have made a better man of Ray than I could. But as I’ve said, such speculation doesn’t really matter any more. What might or might not have happened is no longer of any relevance.
And anyway, who has the responsibility of making a better man of Ray other than Ray himself?

But back to Nora. Without Georgie, Nora relaxed and could be good company. Her warmth and willingness to please made up for so many other things, as far as Claire and I were concerned. Once
Georgie was on the scene, though, it was an entirely different matter. Nora coiled into herself, became clingy and needy, like a spoilt child. She would appear before us, lumbering into our
personal space over and over again with that uncertain look across her eyes. It made her look hunted. And it was that way she had of expecting to be unhappy that used to make Georgie mad as hell.
It brought out the worst in her and made her cruel or, at the very least, dismissive.

Claire would take her over then. If she hadn’t, I don’t think I would have, particularly once the birthday party incident had happened. I’d be able to feel my resistance
weaken, but somehow I just couldn’t get my mouth around the words. Anyway, I knew that Claire would do it for me. And by staying silent, I showed my loyalty to Georgie and that pleased her.
Cowardly, I know, but there you have it. Or maybe not so cowardly, after all. We are bound so closely together, she and I, in an endless tit for tat of ‘I look out for you, you look out for
me.’ I’m not complaining, far from it. It’s something that has given me comfort, ever since I was old enough to recognize friendship for what it is.

Claire would stand up, all brisk and business-like, and say something like: ‘Time we were going, lads: party time. Come on, Nora, we’ll get the beer.’ Then she’d wave
towards Georgie and me. ‘Ye two go on ahead. We’ll catch up with ye later.’

And Helly would shuffle off gratefully after her. Georgie would eff and blind for a few minutes and then shrug it off. She knew, too, that Claire would take care of Helly and make sure she kept
her well out of Georgie’s orbit. She also knew that, although Claire might have been very gentle, she was still the most capable of all of us in getting money out of Nora for her round, or
her share of the party-packs of beer. There is a fine thread of steel to Claire’s spine: I should know. I’ve measured its strength. It wasn’t until so many years later that I
understood Nora’s chronic shortage of money, and how she felt about it.

Anyway, I remember being aware even at the time we all knew each other first, that Nora was an odd mix of desperation and disapproval. She managed to make Claire and me feel sorry for her
and
want
to please her at the same time. I’ve never worked out how she managed to do that. Knowing Nora was my first introduction to the power of the victim, the force of the outsider who is
determined to become an insider.

In March of our first year at Trinity, Nora turned twenty-one. For months, she talked about nothing else – well, apart from her boyfriend Frank, of course, but we were already used to
that. Georgie, Claire and I were on edge as we waited for the party invitation. I didn’t know how we could bear her clone-like sisters and brothers for a whole night. We’d have had to
make polite conversation over one glass of shandy. There was only one of Nora’s family, Eimear, with any sort of spark. I could see that she and Nora were alike in ways, but the younger girl
seemed to have escaped all of her eldest sister’s anxieties. She was bright and pretty and funny – and I have good reason to remember. All the others were so dull we used to wonder
where Eimear had come from. It used to give rise to some fairly outrageous speculation, after a few glasses of Pedrotti. And if there was a party, Frank would be there, too, of course, banging on
endlessly about his shoe-shop, as though any of us was interested in the benefits of ‘wide-fitting, specialist leather’ and how high heels were ‘bad for the spine’.

I got stuck with him one night in O’Neill’s. I had him on one side and Nora on the other. It was not a winning combination. We were on a night out. I wanted to be amused, not stuck
between two lovebirds. And Frank may have turned out to be one of nature’s gentlemen – but back in those days, he still hadn’t grown a sense of humour. Georgie was quick enough to
spot the dangers of how the seating was panning out, and she needed to go to the Ladies all of a sudden.