Stand by Me (7 page)
From the corner of her eye she could see a group of large chestnut trees, their bare branches outlined against the dark sky. She tugged at his hand and led him towards the trees. He followed her until they were among the trees and hidden from both the housing estate and the main road. She could hear the hum of cars in the distance, but much, much louder than any other noise was the sound of her own breathing.
‘Domino . . .’
‘Ssh.’ She kissed him.
He kissed her back, and she felt herself leaning against the biggest of the chestnut trees. She pulled him closer and slid her hand beneath his cotton shirt. His body was warm despite the coldness of the night. She pushed her fingers through the knot of hair on his chest and then traced them to the top of his jeans.
‘Domino ...’ He was speaking with an effort. ‘You must know how much I want to . . . but this isn’t how I planned it.’
‘Why does everything have to be planned?’ she asked, sliding her fingers inside his jeans.
And then she felt his hand on her thigh, easing the fabric of her skimpy pink dress higher.
Her breath was coming in short gasps. The thought careered through her mind that maybe he was right and maybe there would be a better time. But she didn’t want to wait. She wanted him here and now. She didn’t care if they were in a field. She didn’t care that the rain had started to drizzle down on top of them. And she certainly didn’t care that Evelyn would be on her knees and praying for her eternal soul if she knew what her daughter was doing.
Chapter 3
Her pink dress was ruined, her shoes were filthy and she’d lost the chunky white necklace.
She didn’t really care about the necklace, and the shoes could be cleaned, but as she looked at the dress in her bedroom (Brendan had dropped her off in the taxi they’d finally managed to hail having walked almost two miles towards the city first), she didn’t think that she’d ever be able to wear it again. It was stained, wet from the rain, and the hem had also been ripped by a piece of bark from the chestnut tree. She was horrified by the tear but still elated about having made love to Brendan, even though her elation was tempered by a frisson of worry that, having had sex with her, he might not want to see her again. (The magazines that warned you against saying ‘I love you’ also warned about men who were ‘only after one thing’. None of the ones she’d read had ever mentioned that it might be the woman who’d decide that she wanted to have sex with the man. That she might be the one to forgo the luxury sheets for outdoor passion.)
But she didn’t need to worry. Because what Brendan had said afterwards as they’d made their way through the by then muddy field was that it had been wonderful and that she was wonderful. She was the loveliest, most fantastic girl in the world and he adored her.
She couldn’t believe that he’d actually said ‘adore’. She hoped he meant it. Having him make love to her and say things like that to her were surely worth ruining a dress over. All the same . . . she balled it up and shoved it into a plastic bag, which she pushed to the back of her wardrobe . . . it would be an awful waste of money to only get one wear out of it!
She slid between the sheets of her single bed and exhaled slowly. It had been worth it really. She was Brendan’s girl. His lucky charm. His lucky Domino. That was what he’d called her just after his muffled cry of pleasure. My lucky, lucky Domino.
It was the sound of Evelyn vacuuming the stairs that woke her the following morning. She groaned softly, because the noise had set off an unwelcome pounding at the back of her head. It was a few minutes before she felt able to open her eyes again, and when she did, she looked at the old-fashioned alarm clock beside her bed, which was showing almost eleven. She blinked a couple of times - eleven was unforgivably late in the Brady household. Evelyn was always up by seven so that she could go to eight o’clock Mass each morning, and Seamus’s idea of a lie-in at the weekends was to get up when he heard Evelyn leaving the house.
Dominique pushed the covers from her bed. She was sore, and her legs ached as she walked over to her small dressing table. She took a deep breath and looked at her face in the oval mirror. She didn’t look any different. Her eyes weren’t brighter, her hair wasn’t shinier, her face didn’t glow. But inside she felt completely different. She’d made love to her boyfriend. She was a grown-up at last.
As Dominique walked out on to the landing, her dressing gown wrapped around her, Evelyn switched off the vacuum cleaner.
‘You came home very late last night,’ she said.
‘It was a party,’ said Dominique. ‘It wasn’t over till late.’
‘I’m sure it was over well before four,’ said Evelyn. ‘Which was the time you got in at.’
‘It took ages to find a taxi,’ said Dominique. ‘They’re not exactly plentiful in the wilds of Clondalkin, you know.’
Evelyn looked at her sceptically. ‘You mustn’t have been looking very hard.’
‘I swear to God,’ said Dominique. ‘We were standing at the side of the road for hours!’
Which was almost true. She’d had blisters on her feet by the time Brendan had stopped a passing taxi with a piercing whistle. (That ability had impressed Dominique immensely. She’d never known anyone who could actually whistle loud enough to stop a taxi before.)
‘You look a wreck,’ said Evelyn.
‘It was raining,’ Dominique reminded her. ‘We got soaked.’
‘I told you you should have worn a coat.’
Dominique shrugged impatiently.
‘I’m doing a wash this afternoon,’ said Evelyn. ‘If you want your dress and jacket done, put them in the laundry basket.’
Dominique had no intention of doing any such thing. She grunted non-committally at her mother and went downstairs to make toast.
She washed the dress herself the next morning when both Evelyn and Seamus were at ten o’clock Mass. She’d gone into town after breakfast on Saturday, having retrieved the dress from the wardrobe and hidden it under her mattress, just in case her mother found it. She’d left the jacket - which had a long green streak on the shoulder - on a hanger suspended from the handle of her wardrobe. When she’d come home, Evelyn had asked her about the dress and she said that she’d forgotten to put it in the laundry.
‘I looked in your room,’ said Evelyn. ‘It wasn’t with the jacket. You didn’t put that in either, and I’m not sure that mark is going to come out.’
‘Won’t it?’ Dominique was shaking inside. She’d been hoping that the mark on the jacket would distract Evelyn from asking about the dress. She didn’t care that she’d had sex with Brendan but she certainly didn’t want her mother to know. Especially that it had been outdoors in the rain. Evelyn would think the wrong things about it. She’d think of it as cheap and nasty, just because it didn’t fit in with her picture of what sex should be. (Beneath the sheets with the light out, Dominique was certain of that.) But what had happened between her and Brendan hadn’t been cheap and nasty. It had been wonderful. And, she had to admit, there had been a certain excitement in doing something in an empty field with the (admittedly slight) chance of being caught that (a) in her mother’s eyes was a sin and (b) was usually done indoors. All of those things, as well as the fact that it had been with Brendan, and she was madly and crazily in love with Brendan, had made it an experience to remember.
Evelyn had looked at her impatiently while all these thoughts had gone through her mind. Dominique had told her that the dress had probably slipped off the hanger or something and she’d wash it herself later, all the time wishing that her domineering mother would butt out of her life. Also, she thought, it wasn’t right that Evelyn should just walk into her room whenever she felt like it. It was her room, not Evelyn’s. Her private space.
Of course, she admitted to herself as she hung the dress on the line to dry, it wasn’t unusual for Evelyn to come into her room to pick up her washing, and normally she didn’t mind. It was only guilt that was making her feel that her mother was overstepping the mark. Nevertheless, things had changed. She would have to set boundaries that Evelyn couldn’t cross.
She looked at the dress as it flapped on the line. The stains were gone but the rip was very obvious. Her mother was bound to want to know what had caused it.
‘So, how did it happen?’ Evelyn asked as she examined the rip.
‘I’m not sure,’ lied Dominique. ‘Maybe when we were dancing.’
‘It’ll be hard to mend.’
‘Impossible,’ said Dominique.
‘Oh, I’ll manage it,’ said Evelyn. ‘You young ones think nothing of throwing clothes out, but it was different in my day.’
Dominique hoped she wasn’t going to launch into one of her favourite ‘in my day’ speeches, in which life had been tough beyond belief and there’d been none of the luxuries of the 1980s. Besides, it was ludicrous to say that Dominique threw out clothes. Maybe she didn’t have to darn socks like Evelyn used to, but she couldn’t afford to buy new things that often.
‘Thanks,’ she said, her tone offhand.
‘I told you it was unsuitable in the first place,’ said Evelyn. ‘There’s nothing to it. It’s no wonder it ripped.’
‘But it’s lovely,’ Dominique told her.
Evelyn looked sceptical. ‘Hmm,’ she said. ‘I can’t see why you spend your hard-earned money on something so unsubstantial. ’
‘Didn’t you ever want to?’ asked Dominique with genuine curiosity. ‘Didn’t you ever want to wear a dress that was just a silly bit of fabric simply because it was gorgeous?’
‘I never had the opportunity.’ Evelyn was looking in her big wicker sewing basket. ‘My life wasn’t like that.’
‘How about now?’ suggested Dominique. Critically she appraised her mother’s lilac tweed skirt and blue cotton blouse with its ruffled collar. ‘You’re not that old. You could look more ... more ...’
‘Appearances mean nothing.’ Evelyn took a spool of thread from her basket. ‘It’s all superficial. You should know that.’
Dominique nodded. But she couldn’t help thinking that Evelyn, in her late forties, looked decades older than Maeve Mulligan’s mother, who enjoyed Majorcan holidays and going to the pub every Friday night. It didn’t matter that there was only a couple of years between them; Evelyn was an entire generation older in attitude than Kay Mulligan.
I don’t want to be like her, she thought. I don’t want to think like an old person when I’m not. And I want to wear fashionable clothes that make me feel good. All the time.
‘Did Brendan ring you today?’ asked Evelyn as she threaded a needle.
Dominique shook her head. ‘He was meeting a friend who’s coming up from Cork for a job interview tomorrow,’ she said.
‘Don’t do anything stupid.’ Evelyn’s voice was suddenly taut. ‘Don’t let yourself down with him, Dominique.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ said Dominique as dismissively as she could, even though she could feel a cold sweat enveloping her.
‘Of course you do.’ Evelyn slipped a thimble on to her finger. ‘You’re easily led, Dominique.’
‘No I’m not.’
‘You are. You do things because you think they’ll make people like you. But they have to like you for what’s inside.’
‘You have such a low opinion of me!’ cried Dominique. ‘And you don’t know me at all.’ She clamped down on the guilt that was wrapping itself around her. Her mother couldn’t possibly know that she’d had sex with Brendan. She couldn’t possibly know that she was feeling elated, excited, in love - and scared too, because even as they’d started walking back to the main road to get a taxi, the awful thought had struck her that she could be pregnant - she hadn’t been to the family planning clinic yet; that would have been admitting that she wanted him to sleep with her.
He hadn’t had any condoms, and she wouldn’t have known what to do with one if he had. After all, chemists didn’t regularly stock them. The priests and politicians were still trying to pretend that premarital sex didn’t happen in Ireland. They were still in the Dark Ages compared to the rest of Europe.
Brendan had apologised about the condoms, had said that he wasn’t prepared because he hadn’t imagined that she would want . . . and she’d shut him up with a kiss and then he’d said not to worry, he’d be careful. She’d wondered fleetingly about that, wondered where and how and with whom he’d had the experience to know how to be careful. But she still hadn’t stopped, because she’d been totally and utterly overwhelmed by her desire for him.
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