The Book of Tomorrow (3 page)

Kilsaney descendants continued to live in the castle until the 1920s, when some arsonists didn’t get the memo that the inhabitants were Catholic and they burned them out. After that they could only live in a small section of the castle because they couldn’t afford to fix it up and heat it, and then they eventually moved out in the nineties. I don’t know who owns it now but it’s fallen into disrepair: no roof, fallen-down walls, no stairs, you get the idea. There’s loads of stuff growing inside it and whatever else that scutters around. I learned all that while I was doing a project on it for school. Mum suggested I stay with Rosaleen and Arthur for the weekend and do some research. She and Dad had the biggest fight I’d ever seen or heard that day, and Dad became even more crazy when she suggested I go away. The atmosphere was so bad that I was happy to leave them. Plus, Mum trying to get me
to leave the house really pissed Dad off, and so feeling it was my duty as a daughter to make his life hell, I merely obliged. But as soon as I got there, I wasn’t really interested in snooping around and finding out the history of the place. I just about managed to stay with Rosaleen and Arthur for lunch, and then went to the toilet to call my Filipino nanny, Mae—who we’ve since had to send back home—and made her collect me and bring me home. I told Rosaleen I had stomach cramps and tried not to laugh when she asked me if I thought it was the apple pie.

I ended up taking an essay about the castle from the internet. I was called to the principal’s office and she failed me for plagarism, which was ridiculous because Zoey did her project on Malahide Castle, stole everything from the internet, changed a few words and dates around, got the words and dates
wrong
to make it look like she didn’t copy it, and she still got a higher score than me. Where’s the justice in that?

Surrounding the castle is one hundred acres of land. Arthur is the groundskeeper here and, with one hundred acres to look after, he’s out first thing in the morning and back at five thirty on the button, as dirty as a coal miner. He never complains, he never groans about the weather, he just gets up, eats his breakfast while deafening himself with the radio, and then goes out to work. Rosaleen gives him a flask of tea and a few sandwiches to keep him going and he rarely comes back, except to get something from the garage that he forgot, or to go to the toilet. He’s a simple man only I don’t really believe that. Nobody who says as little as he does, is as simple as you’d think. It takes a lot to not say a lot, because when you’re not talking, you’re thinking, and he thinks
a lot
. My mum and dad talked all the time. Talkers don’t think much; their words drown out any possibility of hearing their subconscious asking,
Why did you say that? What do you really think?

I used to stay in bed for as long as possible on school mornings and on weekends until Mae dragged me out kicking and screaming. But here, I wake up early. Surrounded by so many gigantic trees, the place is swarming with birds. They’re so loud and I just wake up without feeling tired. I’m always up by seven, which is nothing short of miraculous for me. Mae would be so proud. The evenings here are long too, and so there’s pressure having to keep myself busy during the daylight. That’s an awful lot of hours for an awful lot of nothing to do.

Dad decided he’d had enough in May, right before my Junior Certificate exams, which was a little unfair as, up until then, I thought I was the one who was supposed to want to top myself. I did my exams anyway. I probably failed them, but I don’t really care and I don’t think anybody else does either. I’ll find those results out in September. My entire class came to Dad’s funeral, which I’m sure they loved because they got a day off school. With all that going on, can you believe I was actually embarrassed about crying in front of them. I did it anyway, which started off Zoey and then Laura. A girl in my class called Fiona, who nobody ever talked to, hugged me really tight and gave me a card from her family saying that they were all thinking of me. Fiona gave me her mobile number and her favourite book, and said she’d be there for me if I ever needed somebody to talk to. At the time I thought it was a bit lame, her trying to get in with me at my dad’s funeral, but thinking about it after—which is something I do now—it was the kindest thing anybody did or said to me that day.

I started reading the book in the first week I moved to Meath. It was a kind of a ghost story about a girl who was invisible to everybody in the world, including her family and friends, even though they knew she existed. She was just born
invisible. I won’t give away the rest but she eventually becomes friends with someone who does see her. I liked the idea and thought Fiona was trying to say something, but when I stayed overnight in Zoey’s house and told her and Laura, they thought it was the weirdest thing they’d ever heard and that Fiona was even more of a freak. You know what, I’m finding it increasingly hard to understand them.

During the first week that we moved here Arthur drove me to Dublin so that I could stay overnight in Zoey’s house. The car journey was over an hour and we never spoke once. The only thing he said was, ‘Radio?’ and then when I nodded he turned it on to one of those channels that just talk about the problems in the country and don’t play music and he snot-snorted his way through it. But at least it was better than silence. After spending the night with Zoey and Laura—and bitching about him all night—I was feeling confident. Back to my old self. We all agreed that he and Rosaleen definitely lived up to being called the Deliverance Duo and that I shouldn’t allow them to pull me into their weirdo existence. That meant that I should be able to listen to whatever the hell I wanted in the car. But the next day, when he picked me up in his filthy dirty Land Rover, which Zoey and Laura so obviously couldn’t stop laughing at, I felt bad for Arthur. I felt really bad.

Having to go back to a house that wasn’t mine, in a car that wasn’t mine, to sleep in a room that wasn’t mine, to try to talk to a mother that didn’t feel like mine, made me want to hold on to at least one thing that was familiar. Who I used to be. It wasn’t necessarily the right thing to hold on to, but it was something. I kicked up a fuss in the car and told Arthur that I wanted to listen to something else. He put my favourite radio station on for one song and then he got so frustrated listening to the Pussycat Dolls singing about wanting boobies,
he grumbled and changed it back to the talk channel. I stared out the window in a huff, hating him and hating myself both at the same time. For half an hour we listened to a woman crying down the phone to the presenter about how her husband had lost his job in a computer factory, couldn’t find another and they had four children to look after. My hair was down across my face and all I could do was hope that Arthur didn’t see me crying. Sad stuff really gets to me now. I heard about it before but I was kind of numb to it. It just didn’t happen to me.

I don’t know how long we’re going to live here. Nobody will answer that question for me. Arthur simply doesn’t talk, my mum isn’t communicating and Rosaleen isn’t able to cope with a question of that magnitude.

My life is not going as I planned. I’m sixteen and by now I should have had sex with Fiachrá. I should be in our villa in Marbella swimming every day, eating barbecued dinners, clubbing every night at Angels & Demons and finding guy number two to fancy and sleep with. If the first person I sleep with ends up being the man I marry, I think I’ll die. Instead, I’m living in hicksville, in a gatehouse with three crazy people, the nearest things to us being a bungalow housing people that I’ve never seen, a post office that’s practically in somebody’s living room, an empty school, and a ruined castle. I have absolutely nothing to do with my life.

Or so I thought.

I’m choosing to start the story from when I arrived here.

My mum’s best friend, Barbara, drove us to our new life in Meath. Mum didn’t say a word the whole way. Not one word. Even when asked a question. Now that’s a hard thing to do. I got so frustrated that I shouted at her in the car; this was back when I was trying to get her to respond.

It all happened because Barbara got lost. Her satellite navigation kit in her BMW X5 failed to recognise the address and so we just headed to the nearest town it could locate. When we got to the town, a place called Ratoath, Barbara had to rely on her own brain and not the equipment in her SUV. As it turns out, Barbara’s not a thinker. After ten minutes spent driving down country roads with few houses and no signposts, I could tell Barbara was starting to get nervous. We were driving down roads which, according to the sat nav, didn’t exist. I should have taken this as a sign. Used to going
somewhere,
and not down invisible roads, Barbara began to make mistakes, driving blindly through crossroads, veering dangerously on to the other side of the road. I’d only been there a handful of times over the years and so I was no help, but the plan was this: for me to look on the left-hand side
for gatehouses and for Barbara to look on the right-hand side. She snapped at me at one stage for not concentrating, but really, I could see that there were no gates for at least a mile, so there was absolutely no point in looking. This, I shared with her. At breaking point she snapped that meant ‘feck all,’ seeing as we were already driving down ‘fecking roads that don’t exist’, so she couldn’t see why there couldn’t be ‘a fecking house without a fecking gate’. Hearing the word ‘fecking’ come out of Barbara’s mouth was a big deal considering her usual expression of annoyance was ‘fiddlesticks!’

Mum could have helped us but she just sat in the front seat smiling as she looked out the window. So, trying to help matters, I leaned forward and—okay, it wasn’t right and it wasn’t clever, but it was what I did, regardless—I shouted in her ear, the loudest possible scream that I could summon up. Mum jumped with fright, blocked her ears and then when her shock had died down, with two hands she swatted me across the head over and over again as though I were a swarm of bees. It really hurt me too. She pulled at my hair, scratched me, slapped me and I couldn’t escape her grip. Barbara got so upset she pulled the car over and had to pry Mum’s hands off me. Then she got out of the car and paced up and down the side of the road crying. I was crying too and my head was pounding from where Mum had pulled and scratched at it. It’s fashionable where I’m from to have a hairstyle like a haystack but Mum just ruined it; she’d made me look like somebody from an insane asylum. We both left her in the car, sitting upright, looking straight ahead and angry.

‘Come here to me, sweetheart,’ Barbara said, between tears, and she reached her arms out to me.

I didn’t need to be asked twice for a hug. I longed for a hug. Even when Mum was on form, she wasn’t a hugger. She was bony, always dieting, had the same relationship with food
as she had with Dad; loved it but didn’t want it most of the time because she felt it was bad for her. I know this because I overheard a conversation she had with a friend at two a.m. on returning from a ladies’ lunch. But regarding the hugging, I think she just felt awkward having somebody physically so close. She wasn’t a comfortable person and so had no comfort to give anybody else. It’s like words of advice; you can’t give them unless you have them. I don’t think it meant she didn’t care. I never felt she didn’t care. Well, okay, maybe I did, a few times.

Barbara and I stood on the side of the road embracing and crying while she apologised to me over and over again about how unfair this all was for me. When she’d pulled over, she’d left the car’s arse sticking out on the road and so every car that came round the corner blasted us with its horn, but we ignored them.

The tension was released somewhat after that. You know the way storm clouds gather when there’s going to be rain—that’s what had been happening with us all the way from Killiney. It was all building, and finally it exploded. So feeling like we’d all had the chance to release at least a portion of our woes, we prepared ourselves for what lay ahead. Only we didn’t have time because as soon as we rounded the next turn we were there. Home sweet home. On the right-hand side stood a gate, and just inside it on the left, was a house. Rosaleen and Arthur were standing by the little green gate of their ‘Hansel and Gretel’ house and God knows how long they’d been waiting there. We were almost an hour late. If they were pretending not to look worried about the whole thing, then it must have been near impossible when they saw our faces. Not knowing we were so close to the house we hadn’t enough time to compose ourselves. My and Barbara’s eyes were red raw from crying, Mum was in the front seat
with a look of thunder on her face and my hair was high in tatters—well, more tattered than usual.

I never thought about how difficult that moment must have been for Arthur and Rosaleen. I was so busy thinking about myself and how much I didn’t want to be there, I didn’t once think about how they were opening their home to two people they had no relationship with. It must have been so unbelievably nerve-racking for them and I didn’t thank them once.

Barbara and I got out of the car. She went to the boot to sort out the bags, and I assume give us all a moment to greet. That didn’t quite happen. I stood there looking at Arthur and Rosaleen, who were still standing behind the little green swinging gate and I immediately wished I’d dropped bread-crumbs all the way from Killiney so I could find my way home.

Rosaleen looked from one of us to another like a meerkat, trying to take in the SUV, Mum, me, Barbara, all at once. She clasped her hands at her front, but kept unlocking them to smooth down her dress as though she were at a Lovely Girl competition in a country
feis
. Mum finally opened the door and got out of the car. She stepped onto the gravel and looked up at the house. Then her anger disappeared and she smiled, revealing puce lipstick on her front teeth.

‘Arthur.’ She held out her arms as though she had just opened the door to her home and was welcoming him to a dinner party.

He snot-snorted, inhaling the mucus—the first time I’d heard it—which made my lip curl in disgust. He stepped towards Mum and she took his hands and looked at him, her head tilted, that strange smile still pulling at her lips like a bad face-lift. In an awkward movement she leaned forward and rested her forehead against his. Arthur stayed there a millisecond longer than I thought he would, then patted the
back of her neck and pulled away from her. He patted me hard on the head as if I was his faithful collie, which messed my hair even more, and then made his way to the boot to help Barbara with the bags. So that left me and Mum staring at Rosaleen, only Mum wasn’t staring at her. She was inhaling the fresh air deeply, with her eyes closed, and smiling. Despite the depressing situation, I had a good feeling then that this could be good for Mum.

I wasn’t as worried about her then as I am now. It had only been a month since Dad’s funeral and we were both feeling numb and unable really to say much to each other or to anybody else for that matter. People were so busy talking to us, saying nice things, tactless things, whatever things popped into their heads—almost looking for us to console them and not the other way around—that Mum’s behaviour wasn’t noticeable so much. She was just sighing along with everybody else every now and again, and saying little words here and there. A funeral is like a little game, really. You have to just play along and say the right thing and behave the right way until it’s over. Be pleasant but don’t smile too much; be sad but don’t overdo it or the family will feel worse than they already do. Be hopeful but don’t let your optimism be taken as a lack of empathy or an inability to deal with the reality. Because if anybody was to be truly honest there would be a lot of arguments, finger-pointing, tears, snot, and screaming.

I think there should be the Real Life Oscars. And Best Actress goes to Alison Flanagan! For walking down the main aisle of the supermarket just last Monday, face in full makeup, hair freshly blow-dried, despite feeling like wanting to
die
, smiling brightly to Sarah and Deirdre from the Parents’ Association and behaving as if her husband hadn’t just left her and her three children. Come up here and get your award, Alison! Best Supporting Actress goes to the woman he left
her for, who was just two aisles away, and who subsequently quite hastily left the supermarket, missing two items of the makings of her new boyfriend’s favourite lasagne. Best Actor goes to Gregory Thomas for his performance at the funeral of his father, whom he hadn’t spoken to for two years. Best Supporting Actor goes to Leo Mulcahy for playing the role of Best Man at a wedding celebrating the marriage of his best friend, Simon, to the only woman Leo has ever, and will ever, truly love. Come up and get the gong, Leo!

That’s what I thought Mum was doing, just playing along, being the good widow, but then afterwards when her behaviour didn’t change, when it felt like she didn’t actually know what was going on and she was using those same little words and sighs in every conversation, I wondered then if she was bluffing. I’m still wondering how much of her is actually with us and how much she’s pretending just so she doesn’t have to deal with it. There was a crack in her, quite understandably, immediately after Dad died, but when people stopped looking at her and went back to their own lives, the crack kept growing, and it seemed like I was the only person who could see it.

It wasn’t the Bank that were being exceptionally unreasonable by turfing us out on our ear. They had already given Dad the repossession date but, along with a ‘Goodbye’, it was just another message he’d forgotten to pass on to us. So even though they’d let us all stay for much longer than they’d threatened, we had to leave at some stage. Mum and I stayed in the back of Barbara’s house, in her Filipino nanny’s mews, for a week. Eventually we had to leave there too because Barbara had to go to their house in St Tropez for the summer and was obviously afraid we’d steal the silver.

Though I said I wasn’t as worried about Mum as when we first arrived at the gatehouse, it doesn’t mean that I wasn’t concerned at all. My suggestion before we arrived here was
that Mum go see a doctor, whereas now I’m thinking she should check herself into one of those places where people wear white bumless smocks all day and rock back and forth in the hallways. It was to Barbara that I suggested Mum should visit the doctor. Barbara just patronisingly sat me down in her kitchen and told me that Mum was doing what is called ‘grieving’. At sixteen years old, you can imagine how delightful it was to learn that word for the first time. And then I settled down for a conversation about heavy petting. But she didn’t go there. Instead, she asked if I minded sitting on her suitcase while she zipped it shut because Lulu, the glue that holds her life together, had taken the kids to their horse-riding lessons. As I sat on her bulging Louis Vuitton suitcase and she zipped in her zebra-print bikinis, gold thong sandals and ridiculous hats, I made a wish for it to burst open on the conveyer belt at the airport in St Tropez, and for her vibrator to fall out and buzz around for everybody to see.

So there we were, on the first day of the rest of my life, outside the gatehouse, Mum with her eyes closed, Rosaleen staring at me with excited wide green eyes and her little pink tongue licking her lips now and then, Arthur snot-snorting at Barbara, which meant he didn’t want her to carry any bags, and Barbara watching him with bewilderment and probably trying not to gag at his snot-snorting, in her loose tracksuit, flip-flops and Oompa-Loompa orange face. She’d just had a spray tan that morning.

‘Jennifer,’ Rosaleen finally broke the silence over on our side.

Mum opened her eyes and smiled brightly and it seemed to me that she recognised Rosaleen and knew exactly what she was doing. If you hadn’t spent every second of the last month with her as I had, you’d think she was okay. She was bluffing rather well.

‘Welcome,’ Rosaleen smiled.

‘Yes. Thank you.’ Mum chose a correct response from her little words file.

‘Come in, come in, and we’ll get you some tea,’ Rosaleen said with urgency in her voice, as though we were all going to die unless we had some tea.

I didn’t want to follow them. I didn’t want to go in because then that would mean that it all had to start. Reality, that is. No more in-betweenness of funeral arrangements or Barbara’s mews. This was the new arrangement and it had to begin.

Arthur, the king prawn, rushed by me and up the garden path laden down with bags. He was stronger than he looked.

The car boot slammed and I spun round. Barbara was fidgeting with her car keys and shifting from one Louis Vuitton flip-flopped foot to the other. It was only then that I noticed she had cotton wool between her toes. She looked at me, awkwardly, in a heavy silence while she figured out how to tell me she was leaving me.

‘I didn’t realise you had a pedicure done too,’ I said to fill the silence.

‘Yes.’ She looked down and wriggled her toes as if to confirm it. Jewels glistened from her big toes. And then she added, ‘Danielle’s invited us to a drinks party on her yacht tomorrow evening.’

Most people would think those two sentences were unrelated, but I understood. You can’t wear shoes on Danielle’s yacht, therefore competition of the jewels and white tips would be fierce. Those women would find ways to accessorise their patellas if they were the only parts showing.

We stared at each other in silence. She was dying to go. I wanted to go with her. I too wanted to be shoeless on the Mediteranean coast while Danielle floated around the guests holding a martini glass daintily between her squared French tips, a plunging Cavalli dress revealing tits as pert as the
pimento-stuffed olive floating in her glass, and on her head a tilted sea captain’s hat, making her look like Captain Birdseye in drag. I wanted to be a part of that.

‘You’ll be all right here, sweetheart,’ she said, and I sensed sincerity. ‘With family.’