The Shelter of Neighbours (29 page)

Driving – if it was driving – moving, whizzing, racing – along the streets, then along the Bray Road and up the winding ways to the mountains, felt like flying. Cycling had felt like that, sometimes, but this was different. On a bicycle I had felt like a bird. Being on the Honda was more like being on a small plane. Faster and easier.

And there was the joy of being a pillion passenger.

There was a small strap in the middle of the saddle, which perhaps the passenger was supposed to hold on to. But on this model of bike you really had to grab the driver around the waist, to keep your balance. That's what I did. I put my two arms around Seán's waist, and held on tight, as we sped through Dublin and up into the mountains.

My skirt wasn't a problem. There was so much of it that it spread easily over the saddle and covered my legs. In fact, the blouse caused me more difficulty. Even though it was a very fine, sunny afternoon, I felt cold as we drove higher into the foothills and could have done with a jumper, if not a big anorak. Clinging to Seán became more and more necessary.

Somewhere past a pitch-and-putt course called Puck's Castle, we stopped.

In a carpark. There were just two cars in it, though, and it was a mountain carpark, with big evergreen trees embracing it and soft, spicy pine needles carpeting the ground. The air was glaucous – a lovely, delicate greyish-green.

You don't have to hop off a motorbike the second it stops, it's not like a bicycle. There's a stand to keep it steady on the ground. Seán put down the stand and climbed down first. I remained seated, not sure what to do. Truth to tell, I felt stiff and a bit winded from the ride. And I was freezing.

He took my hand and helped me down.

Then he removed the helmet, as if I were a child.

‘Are you
ok
?' he asked. He looked very serious, stern almost, and very gentle at the same time.

I shook my head, ever so slightly.

The smell of the pines mixed with some other smell – the sweet, herby smell of clover. The trees whispered. Other than that, there was absolute silence.

The world was holding its breath.

He put his hand to my cheek and stroked it softly. ‘You're cold,' he said. His voice trembled. ‘You're cold.'

A bird sang, two notes, somewhere in the forest.

He put his arms around me then and we kissed.

The first time. But we went on and on for ages.

It's easier to learn to kiss than to learn to ride a bicycle, in some ways. But in some ways it's much harder to judge the moment correctly, to seize hold of your confidence, to take the plunge.

And falling in love is not like learning to ride a bicycle. It's more like falling off one.

As time goes on, though, you need to learn to turn into the wind and keep your balance.

That is what we could not do.

The summer was paradise. That's not an exaggeration. The motorbike, the trees in the forest, the salty walks on the beach, mixed together to create heaven on earth. Young love can fuse with nature if it gets a chance – it can become part of the fertile blend. Fish, flesh, fowl commended us all summer long, caught in the sensual music of the birds and the waves and the trees of our own endlessly fascinating story. A country for young men and women it was, especially if they had a means of transport, if they had a motorbike. Up the mountains and to the beaches and all over Dublin we went. We made love in woods and by the sea and on the banks of lakes and rivers – not made love properly, of course, we were far too timid and cautious and puritanical for that. We cuddled and pressed and kissed, for all we were worth, in the midst of nature.

Our examination results were very good when they came through. A further bond. I got an entrance scholarship, and he got a prize for coming first in his year. We felt like a special couple, lucky people, clever people. Obviously, we were made for one another.

Work kept us apart for half the time. We didn't question that limitation much, nor did we appreciate it. Seán would be at the shop door at half past five to collect me on the bike, and we would be together until midnight, or later, when he would leave me home.

When the summer jobs ended and college started, however, we were not constrained by the rigid timetables of jobs. We were not constrained by anything.

That should have been a huge excitement in itself. But it wasn't. That was the first problem. Seán had told me so much about what went on in college that I felt I had been there already. There was a sense of staleness about it, then, where there should have been novelty. And that was not the worst thing. The worst thing was that the most significant thing about the university was that Seán was in it.

My first day, for instance, focused on meeting Seán for lunch. So when I was walking up the avenue, finding my way around the warren of dark corridors, figuring out where Theatre R was, and the library, and greeting schoolfriends I had not seen since June, I was thinking, At half past twelve. Half past twelve. I'll meet him for lunch.

The canteen was thronged with thousands of students. Seán kept greeting people – girls and boys – he knew from last year.

He'd kept his head down in first year, studying obsessively, to earn the high honours he wanted to achieve. But he had got to know people all the same. And now they nodded to him, with a certain deference, because he had come top of the class.

We ate lunch and then Seán suggested we go into town. He needed to get some books.

The suggestion surprised me. It was my first day, I didn't want to leave. And I had a lecture after lunch.

‘Go if you want to,' he said. ‘But you'll be missing nothing if you don't. He's a terrible lecturer. Just read the text.'

I would have liked to go, anyway. After all, I had only been to two lectures in my life so far, and I did not think they were boring.

But.

‘
ok
,' I said, looking around the canteen and the crowds of young people, talking and laughing. They looked carefree to me, like children playing a game, and I felt set apart, burdened with the heavy weight of my love.

I went into town with Seán, on the bike.

We walked around the bookshops and had coffee in Bewley's.

He told me about lecturers and professors I would have, and about the content of some of the courses. He spoke interestingly, vividly, of these things, as he was vivid and entertaining about everything. But I felt I was missing something. And I was not sharp enough, ruthless enough, to give a name to what that was.

Seán also talked about people in his own class, which was some special sub-group of high-powered students. Camilla and Olwyn and Rebecca – the girls had romantic, posh names, and even the sound of them sent pangs of jealousy pricking at my heart.

‘Camilla is the most attractive girl in college,' he said then. This was when we were eating cherry buns. He went on to talk about some lecturer who fancied her, and laughed. ‘They're all smitten! They're gas!' he said.

I picked a cherry from the bun, then left the yellow cake on my plate.

I neglected about a third of my lectures in the first term, and half in the second and third.

Seán missed much more. By the final term, he wasn't attending anything. Caught in something – a sensual confusion, or some other sort of confusion for which we had no name – he neglected everything. It was as if he had said goodbye to his old life of study and concentration, and jumped off a cliff, bringing me with him.

Instead of studying or attending classes, we sat in the canteen, drinking coffee, or we walked around the campus, finding secret places where we could sit and kiss and press our bodies together. In the cold weather we found secret places indoors, too, even though that was taking a risk.

This was all appalling. But it happened gradually and, anyway, did not seem quite so appalling then. It was not very unusual for students to skip classes and lectures. With this observation, I tried to console myself. There were lots who did that, for no reason at all, and perhaps there still are. I had friends who didn't bother, quite often, going to class. They had no reason for that, no reason as compelling as mine (which was that Seán wanted me to stay with him). Not being an attender was one way of getting through college in those days. What was strange and discomfiting was that I didn't see myself as that type of student. I saw myself as the other kind, who was studious and careful, and who went to everything, and then to the library to work for hours. What were they doing there? Those students who sat for eight hours, reading, and taking notes? I couldn't even imagine what they were up to. That's how far I had gone. I had always loved reading but on the rare occasions when I managed to get to the library the words danced before my eyes.

A strange thing happens to students who don't attend lectures. They lose track of what is going on, at a superficial level and also at a deep level. The problem is not that they miss the content of what the lecturer is saying, which is often not all that important, anyway, at least not in Arts. The problem is more that they lose the thread of the course. They lose the plot.

They lose their balance.

They tumble off the wheel and they get completely lost.

We got fed up of the life we were leading, naturally. But it affected us in different ways. Seán got fed up of me, while I clung more and more to him, in ever-increasing desperation. I was afraid if I lost my grip on him, I'd tumble into some even deeper abyss and be totally lost and destroyed. I feared this, although I hated the chaos we were in. (I was in love with him. That was the only thing I was sure of.)

At the end of the year, Seán failed his examinations and I scraped through mine. We struggled on through the summer – he was studying for repeats; I was back working in the bookshop. It rained all the time. I ate chocolate and missed Seán when I was at work. In the evenings and at weekends he was often busy – he had to study hard to cover the entire syllabus in two months, so that he would pass the repeats.

He passed, and we were both back in college in October.

But the relationship was over. During the summer he'd fallen in love with a girl in his class, one of those with the names. Not Camilla, the belle of Belfield. Rebecca. Rebecca hadn't failed her exams, but she'd been in college during the summer, anyway; she had some sort of summer job in the examinations office. (Also, wavy, fair hair, a small pert face, and a motherly demeanour. She wore a pale blue blouse, often, and a knee-length navy skirt, and had big round glasses. She looked like a cute little owl.)

I cut my hair and stopped wearing the flowing, hippy clothes Seán liked. Now I wore jeans and a denim jacket, or a miniskirt and high leather boots. I'd gone on a diet and lost a great deal of weight, so those clothes suited me now. People told me I looked great. Girls often told me they wished they had my figure, and boys, young-looking skinny boys, asked me on dates, which I sometimes accepted, though usually I did not enjoy them, since those boys could not measure up to Seán. Who could? I was very pleased with my new body, however – when I stopped menstruating, I wasn't worried in the slightest. No more mess.

Once, I got a shock. I became blind. I had walked from home to college, about half an hour's walk. When I came into the main hall, I felt my vision begin to fade from my eyes, slowly, like a light dimming. For a quarter of an hour I was in the dark. And then the sight returned, as slowly as it had disappeared, with bright spots and flashes and darts like lightning bolts. A bad headache. I guessed this temporary blindness was related to my dieting in some way, just like the loss of my periods was. But I told nobody about it. I thought they wouldn't believe me, anyway, and say it was my imagination. Nobody knew about anorexia in those days in Dublin. In that field I was a pioneer.

I didn't do well in my second-year examinations, either, even though I had attended everything. You can't really do well in exams if you're starving to death. I had realised that, after an academic year on my self-imposed fast, but the low marks I was getting on the weighing scales meant more to me than high marks on an examination transcript. One figure sank in tandem with the other. I was lucky to pass, just as I was lucky to be alive and healthy, to all intents and purposes. My brain and my body seemed to have a great capacity for survival. My heart was the trouble-spot. It was unreasonable and pathetic, but even after almost a whole year, I was still pining. I hardly knew why then, and I do not now. That sort of heartbreak is difficult to understand. If you're not enduring it, it seems ridiculous. It is ridiculous. But it's horrible, and real, and can be fatal.

When summer came around once more, I attempted to find a cure for love in the time-honoured way: foreign travel. A change of scene might obliterate the memory, patch up my broken heart. Adventure, excitement, something more exotic than the bookshop was prescribed, by myself, as the most likely panacea for my woe.

The miracle cure was to be this: a job in a hotel on the Isle of Wight. I was to be a still-room waitress. I didn't know what that was, but it sounded all right. Stillness was something I was fond of, and there is a touch of glamour to the word ‘waitress'. The Isle of Wight, obviously, had a nice summery ring to it. I had always been a sucker for Isles. And working in a hotel would force me to be sociable, bring me out of myself (which was where I'd spent nearly the whole year, deep inside that spot at the back of my eyes where I hid from the dangerous world outside). I'd meet people – the people who took their holidays in the Green Gables Boarding House in Sandown.

Finally, one definite advantage the Isle of Wight had over Dublin was that Seán and Rebecca were most unlikely to be there. Although I spent my days and nights longing to be with Seán, the very worst moments had been those when I had actually seen him, walking around arm in arm with Rebecca, or zipping through the campus on his motorbike, with her stuck to him like a human rucksack. In college I had developed elaborate ruses for avoiding encounters with them, hiding out in the ladies' reading room, for instance, where he wasn't allowed and where Rebecca would never come, either, since she was always glued to Seán. I had spent most of the year finding ways to make myself invisible, but somehow hoping that that would blot him out, too. But it hadn't. I am sure he didn't enjoy seeing me, but he didn't seem to make serious efforts to avoid that eventuality. He had Rebecca, after all, to cheer him up if the sight of the abandoned waif pricked his conscience.