The Shelter of Neighbours (30 page)

I headed off to the Isle of Wight with Orla. Neither of us had ever been out of Ireland before and were delighted to be getting away from the place. The sound of the ship's siren when the anchor was lifted was a blast of some heavenly trumpet to my ears. The sound reverberated through me; it was a siren call heralding freedom, adventure, mysterious and unimaginable delights.

The Holyhead ferry was full of students from Dublin, going over to England, like us, for summer jobs – on building sites, in hotels and shops. A good few of them were going to pick fruit in Norfolk. ‘For the jam factories,' as somebody explained, with some impatience, when I asked. ‘That's where the money is. Doesn't every fool know that?'

Nobody else was going to the Isle of Wight.

It was a bright evening, post-exam-time, midsummer. The ferry bobbed out of the harbour, with seagulls screaming in great excitement around the stern. Up on deck I stayed, watching Ireland recede, delighted with the view of the coastline as we moved away across that mythical water, the Irish Sea. How different Dún Laoghaire looked from out here! Its stacked rooftops, its steeples rising into the peachy evening sky, the dusky purple hills behind all that, gave it a fairytale appearance that it didn't have at all when you were in it. It seemed that the further away you got from Ireland, the more beautiful it became.

When it finally disappeared, I sighed with joy and went below deck, my sister with me.

The crossing to Wales lasts three and a half hours. You could hire a berth but it's not worth it, so we sat up in the plastic Pullman seats in a big lounge. A musician was playing folk songs in the adjoining pub, to the great pleasure of the hundreds of young people on board. He was a star at the time, and he was a good musician. There was plenty of singing, and drinking of beer, and a certain amount of vomiting over the gunwale or simply straight onto the deck.

We didn't drink alcohol then, and we weren't ‘into' music (well, I wasn't into anything much), so we didn't join them. Just sat in our big chairs, reading. (I had a Margaret Drabble novel; I suppose you could say I was into her.) According to a well-considered plan, at eleven, halfway through the voyage, we treated ourselves to a snack. There was a canteen place at the end of the lounge, and I went there to get the tea and sandwiches. (When it came to the crunch, I just got one sandwich, for my sister. I could not bring myself to eat one. I didn't feel hungry. I never did.)

In the queue at the counter I met a girl who had been in my tutorial in first year. Iseult. I hadn't known her well – I knew no one well in first year because I was so busy with Seán.

‘Hi!' She was a cheery girl with an electric mop of black hair, wiry glasses. A wide, generous smile. She looked like an American but she was from Clonskeagh or Stillorgan or somewhere like that.

She was going to Chester to work in an inn there, as a barmaid. She would make a terrific barmaid.

‘Hey,' she said, after we had exchanged information about our summer jobs. ‘That was terrible, what happened to Seán Smyth.'

I turned to jelly. Whenever I heard his name, this happened to me – a mountain of panic and shame avalanched on top of me.

‘What?' I could hardly squeeze the word out.

‘Don't you know?' Concern darkened her lively face. ‘You used to be friendly with him, I thought.'

Friendly.

‘Well, I haven't seen him for a while,' I said. Even saying the pronoun ‘him' was a struggle.

‘
ok
.' She looked at me carefully.

Could it be that she did not know about me and Seán? Could it be that there were people in the world who did not know the whole sorry, shameful story?

‘He was in an accident,' she said. ‘Just a few days ago. It was in the paper.'

I must have reacted strongly because she put her hand on my elbow and guided me to a seat.

‘Sorry,' she said. She held my hand. Hers was very hot and mine was very cold. ‘I gave you a shock. I'm sorry, I thought everyone knew.' She paused again. Then, quietly, she told me he was dead. He came off his motorbike. ‘Remember, he used to go everywhere on a Honda?'

I remembered.

My strength was beginning to return to me – the way my sight had returned that time I lost it last term, or the way the blood goes back to your head after you faint. Your balance is restored.

‘I hadn't heard,' I said. I could hear that my voice was steadier and louder.

The holiday in England changed me again, body and soul. I stopped being anorexic. The work as a still-room waitress, which means washing up, combined with making beds and chambermaiding, was so hard that you couldn't do it on the tiny rations I was accustomed to. I had to eat. And I got to like the food; the chef, who owned the hotel, was very good, and the menu of a seaside boarding house seemed tasty enough to me. Roast beef on Sunday, steak-and-kidney pie on Monday. Curried eggs on Friday – that was my favourite. Enormous salads with ham and grated cheddar cheese and beetroot, Everests of potato salad. I learned how to drink, too – lager and lime in pubs, and strawberry wine at barn dances. At one of those dances I met a chap from Liverpool, who looked like Ringo, with a long fringe of black hair, a black polo neck, jeans. Steve. He liked football and
Top of the Pops
and worked as a lifeguard on the beach at Sandown. And he had a car – a red sports car. In the evenings after work he would drive me around the island – to Cowes, Ventnor, Shanklin Chine. To the Downs. How I loved that name, the Downs! So summery, so English, so Isle of Wight!

I couldn't love Steve, though, and when we kissed in the car, I felt nothing much, but I went along with it. I knew he liked me more than I liked him, and I felt sorry for him because of that. But I assumed that is how it would be for me from now on. I wasn't all that sorry.

(That wasn't true, as it turned out. But it was never like the Seán summer again.)

Seán didn't break it off with me in the normal way. There is a normal way, even if it's not easy. Have a serious, sad talk. Write a note. Even make a phone call. But he didn't do any of these things. He never actually told me he had another girlfriend. I found out about Rebecca when I saw her on the back of his bike on the first day of my second year in college. The writing had been on the wall for months and I hadn't read it, but when I saw her, with his helmet on her long, fair hair, glued to him like a limpet, I knew I had lost him forever. I didn't need the confirmation I got all too soon of seeing them arm in arm, walking down the main concourse of Belfield.

But I wanted to hear him say something. I wanted to hear his voice.

On the second day of term I saw him – and Rebecca – eating lunch in the canteen. (I was still eating lunches then myself.) So, with my legs trembling, everything trembling, I approached him.

‘Hi, can I talk to you?' I glanced at the girl and she looked at me distastefully, as if I were milk that had turned sour.

‘No,' he said bluntly, and attended to his chips and burger.

I didn't say another word. I walked out of the crowded canteen. I ran away.

In my memory I replayed this scene very often during the year after he had left me. I relived the horror of it, and the embarrassment, both of which were acute. It was not, though, until about thirty years later that I rewrote my script. I realised then, suddenly, that I could have handled it in a different way. I could have made a scene. I could have shamed him, there, in front of Rebecca, in front of the whole college. ‘What is the meaning of this?' I could have roared. (Or I could have asked in a calm, deadly voice – there was more than one version of the episode.) ‘You were kissing me in the mountains last week. Why haven't you contacted me since then?'

I wouldn't have got him back. But I could have made plenty of trouble for him. I could have made trouble for Rebecca and there might have been some satisfaction for me in that, some salvation of pride, some pleasure in revenge.

But it didn't occur to me that I could fight back, or ask for anything, even a word. The only thing I wanted to do was disappear, try to become invisible, and fade off the face of the earth.

When I got back to Dublin, I was tanned and filled out. Everyone said I looked wonderful, although I could read behind their eyes and see that some of them were thinking, My, hasn't she put on weight. (I hadn't put on much. A stone. I didn't care. I liked my brown skin and my short hair and my tanned legs, and I'd bought lots of sassy, dolly bird clothes in London on the way home, to show myself off.)

I asked my father to teach me to drive. He said yes, and on Sundays he brought me to the carpark in college – a place unofficially designated as a weekend driving school by the residents of the local suburbs – and gave me lessons in the car he had then – an Anglia, with a strange inverted back window, fourteen years old and rusting.

There was no question of putting me on his insurance policy. He would never have dreamt of sharing his car with anyone; he would as soon have shared his underpants or toothbrush. He didn't particularly relish me taking the wheel for the supervised lessons, either, but that sacrifice he was willing to make, because he believed that everyone should have their own means of locomotion (he believed in private transport more than he believed in education, or perhaps in anything).

By Christmas I could drive from college to home and back again (uninsured, too). Then my mother, who was thrilled that I ate food again and had stopped moping about Seán – we never mentioned his death – had a bright idea. She went to a garage in town – it was over on the north side, a big Ford dealer – and bought a Cortina, huge and shiny, silver blue. It was not brand new, it had been a showroom model, but it was the newest and best car we'd ever had. She didn't tell my father about it until she'd paid for it. Then he had to go over there on the bus and drive it home; she didn't drive herself.

The Cortina was for him – and her, he continued to drive her everywhere. (It was fine, it seemed, not to drive if you had a husband to chauffeur you around, but my father was preparing me for a single life, just in case.) I got the ancient Anglia as my Christmas present.

Hardly any students had their own cars then, especially if they were girls.

During second year, one of the things I did to try to get over Seán was join the drama society. I auditioned and got a part in a production of
Medea
. It wasn't a real part – it was in the Chorus. I was so preoccupied with my problems that I hardly understood what was going on in the play, and I mimed many of the lines I was supposed to chant, with a large choir of women. (I think everyone who auditioned was given a part in the Chorus, so it didn't matter that I wasn't pulling my weight.) Medea was played by a girl with an aquiline nose and black frizzy hair, and she was made up to look like a real witch. I had no sympathy with her, as she stood centre stage, ranting and screaming her head off in a stream of invective that I couldn't take in. If I'd listened more carefully, I might have gained something from the play, catharsis even, but I was too hungry to focus on it.

The only scene that impressed me was the most horrible scene in all of drama – where Medea sends the gift of the poisoned dress and crown to Creon's daughter, using her own two children as go-betweens, and Creon's daughter tries them on, prinking before the mirror, and then burns to death in agony. With her, I sympathised – who could not? I could feel the strange poisonous burning on my own skin.

We had no children in our production. We were all students – we had no access to children, or interest in having anything to do with them. (You would think, to hear us discuss the problem of the children, that we hardly knew what a child was.) The director of the play asked me to step out from the Chorus and carry the gift from Medea to Creon's daughter – they had someone playing her part, behind a muslin curtain. I was happy to do something that was so effortless. I glided out, like a wraith, and took the dress and crown from the black-haired Medea, and walked to the curtain where Creon's daughter waited, also thin as a wraith in a white nightdress. She had fair hair, softly curly, and was as dainty and translucent as a glass doll. (This scene is supposed to happen offstage. But our director, like many others, couldn't resist dramatising it.)

Creon's daughter has no name in the play, and no speaking part. But some sources say that she was called Glauce. That sounds ugly, but it has a nice meaning. Owl. The noun ‘glaucoma', a disease of the eye, derives from it, I think, as does the adjective glaucous, which I always thought meant ‘green', but means ‘greyish-green', the colour of army tanks, and certain lichens.

Father Braygy of the Blind was one of those men whose charm makes them look more handsome than they really are. Once a year he would come,
tap tap tap
, on the thick oak door of our classroom, and when the teacher said, ‘Come in', he would hop into the room and skip along the aisle between the ancient oak desks, his face collapsing in rings of laughter. And we would all start laughing, too. He laughed so much that you didn't notice that his round green eyes bulged and that his hair was like slimy riverweed, slicked over his shiny head.

Our teacher, Mrs Doyle, who had worn the same blue blouse with a droopy bow every day for seven years, melted quickly under the smiles, the irresistible warmth, of Father Braygy. Although his skin looked like cold rubber, affection and enthusiasm poured out of him like cocoa and the minute he hopped through the door the air in our room changed; happiness, always bubbling just below the surface of the imprisoning schoolday, leapt out to meet him. I thought of the fountain in the Green, the water squirting out of the funny sort of pine cone thing in the middle, shooting up in the air and sparkling in the sunshine. He made our hearts sparkle like that, just by coming in and talking.

We were extraordinary girls! So clever and good and so neat. And so good-looking. Do you know what, he'd never seen a classful of such beautiful girls! Mrs Doyle was a marvellous teacher, exceptional, and he knew what he was talking about because he visited all the schools in Ballanar. And we'd collected so much money that nobody could believe it. Our school was the all-Ireland champ of Ballanar when it came to collecting money.

For St Lucia's School for the Blind, he meant. That's really why Father Braygy visited us, to get us to take flag boxes and collect money for the school he taught in.

‘Last year, do you know how much money we collected, girls?' His green eyes changed colour and glowed blue as the sea at the very thought of it.

‘No, Father,' we chorused.

‘Go on. Take a guess. How much do you think? All the schools in the city of Ballanar?'

We looked at Mrs Doyle for help. How many schools were there in Ballanar? We hadn't a clue; it wasn't a thing we'd ever thought about. We had no idea how many flag boxes Father Braygy distributed. Mrs Doyle did not meet the sea of eager eyes that begged her for help. She hadn't a clue, either, but she would never admit ignorance in front of a class, or a priest.

‘You'll never believe it. But we collected more than five thousand pounds, girls. That's what you and all the other boys and girls did for St Lucia's last year.'

He was silent for a second to let the enormity of the communication sink in. Five thousand pounds. My friend, Margaretta, and I, let out a big, loud gasp to let him know we were impressed, even though we didn't know the difference between five thousand pounds and five hundred, or five million.

‘And the boys in St Lucia's are so grateful for that money. They pray for you every day, because you've done so much for them. The money means that our building fund is getting so big that soon we'll be able to build a new wing with lovely new classrooms and a swimming pool.'

Now our eyes glowed, too. Five thousand pounds meant nothing to us but a swimming pool did. There were no swimming pools in Ballanar that I was allowed use. Mountpleasant Baths were too rough and the Blue Pool at Blackrock too cold and far away. Those blind boys would get a pool in their own school! It would almost be worth it, being blind.

If we could collect even more money in the boxes this year, the day of the swimming pool would draw closer. For them.

And for us who were not blind there was another incentive.

The party.

‘When the collection is done, we'll have our big, big party. If you collect more than two pounds, you'll get your own personal invitation.'

Two pounds. Four hundred and eighty pennies. Margaretta and I looked at each other and shook our heads.

‘Girls, this is the best party in Ireland. We have loads of cakes and biscuits and sweets and lemonade, and singing and games and fun. Everyone who comes to the party says they have the time of their life. I'll write a letter to Mrs Doyle and tell her all about it after the flag day, and tell you how to get there.'

The collection boxes arrived at the school ten days before the Easter holidays. They were about the size of a tin of beans, covered with yellow paper. ‘St Lucia's School for the Blind' was printed on them in thick black letters around the middle, and there was a little black man, a blind person, underneath. With the boxes came cartons of the small, yellow, paper flags and packets of pins. We prepared for the collecting by sticking a pin into each little flag. Then these were pinned around the rim of the box in a frill. At first it was fun to stick a pin in the little stiff flags, but after about forty of them, it got boring, and your fingers were pricked and sore. However, I'd have to get rid of about four hundred flags to be in with a chance, so I went on sticking pins in flags for hours and hours.

Saturday, the Saturday before Palm Sunday, was a chilly day, but I was up before anyone in my house, getting ready to set off into town. Margaretta was going to go collecting, too, and we had arranged to meet outside Pim's at noon. My mother said, ‘Wrap up well now or you'll get your death a' cold', and gave me fourpence for the bus fare to and from town. But as soon as I turned the corner of our road, I put the pennies in my flag box to make it rattle, and walked down town.

There was nobody about on the streets near my home. All stuffed up in their beds, the lazy bones, sleeping it out. But in the English Market there were plenty of early birds scrutinising the stalls for the best bargains in the way of fruit and vegetables. I could, I should, rattle my box at them and start collecting now. But it wasn't as easy as I'd thought to beg for money, even for a good cause like the Blind.

I went and stood outside Driscoll's, the poultry shop; dead chickens, partly feathered, were hung by the feet from hooks outside the shop, their white skin loose and goose-pimpled, their long, scrawny necks swinging, their beady eyes horrified. There was a long queue of women buying their chickens for Sunday dinner, and the week's supply of eggs.

I shut my eyes. I said: do it.

Then I rattled my box under the nose of the next woman who came out of the shop, the flabby, cherry red comb of a bird's head dangling over the edge of her straw basket.

‘Please help the Blind,' I sang, in a mantra, like the woman on the stalls. ‘Help St Lucy's School for the Blind.'

It was easier to say ‘St Lucy's' than ‘St Lucia's' when you were chanting – I found that out just as I was saying it.

Rattle rattle rattle
went a few pennies in the bottom of the box.

‘Oh thank you,' I said, and jabbed the flag into the brown lapel of her coat.

‘You're welcome, love,' she said.

After that it was easy.

A lot of women just looked away and hurried on with their bags of shopping. But a few stopped, looked worried, rooted in their bags and found a penny. One said:

‘Aren't you the good girl?'

Some said:

‘I gave already.'

Another said:

‘Mother of God, youse are all over the place.'

At about half past eleven I left my post outside the poultry shop and walked down to Donegall Street. It was cold and it would have been nice to have a cup of tea or something to eat, but I had no money to buy anything. I met several other children with collection boxes as I made my way down past Tesky's biscuit factory, where the smell of baking was so hot and thick you could almost believe you were eating it, but not quite, because it was a smell that made you hungrier than ever.

‘I'm starving,' I said to Margaretta, who came, a bit late, as was her style, to meet me outside Pim's.

She rattled my box, then shook her head.

‘You didn't get much!'

I thought I'd got quite a lot, so I pouted, but she didn't pay any attention to me.

‘Women are stingy', is what she said. ‘We need to get some men.'

We looked up and down the street. Women everywhere. Young and old, in shabby, belted gabardines, lugging big brown shopping bags, or in smart pastel woollen coats, tiny pill box hats perched on glossy curls, swinging the smart cardboard bags with the names of the fashion shops on them. Shaw's. Switzer's. Brown Thomas.

No men.

Where are they? The men?

At work.

Most people still worked then, on Saturdays. Most men. That's what we had forgotten.

‘Tomorrow will be good,' she said. ‘There'll be men to get after Mass tomorrow.' She clamped her lips together and stared hard at the collection box. ‘You know what I'm going to do? Put on my dancing costume. When we had the flag day for our dancing school, I got loads of money.'

I was dubious. I, too, had collected for my dancing school, the Lily O'Brien School of Irish Dancing, and it was true that the costumes attracted attention. An American tourist had even taken my picture, on the corner of North Mall, and given me half-a-crown.

‘But we're not collecting for the dancing, we're collecting for the Blind.'

Margaretta screwed up her eyes again and thought hard. ‘We've got to do something.'

She rattled her box vehemently and from the loud, clear rattle you could tell it was still nearly empty.

‘Empty vessels make most noise!' she said, and we started to giggle, because that was something Mrs Doyle said at least three times a day, before she slapped us for talking.

Next morning, instead of putting on my ordinary Sunday outfit, which was my Confirmation suit from last year – a pale blue tweed suit, white straw hat – I dressed in my dancing costume.

‘What in the name of God are you doing in that rig-out?' my mother asked.

‘I'll sell more flags for the Blind in this. People will see me.'

‘They'll see you all right!' she said, and rolled her eyes up to heaven.

But she let me wear it, because she could see there would be a sulk if she didn't.

My dancing costume was not all that nice. In Lily O' Brien's, boys and girls wore more or less the same outfit: a saffron kilt, a black jacket, and a green shawl slung down the back, not like any real shawl or scarf – it was just to get something green into the outfit, green, white and gold, the colours of the Irish flag. The only lovely thing was the white blouse, starched and nicely stiff, with a wide Peter Pan collar and tiny black buttons down the front. It fitted snugly to the body. (The boys wore an ordinary white shirt.) And you could pull up the kilt to make it short, like a miniskirt, which is what I did, revealing my fat, white knees. We had no black tights – we wore white knee socks, and our dancing shoes, the soft poms for the reels and the patent, hard-soled sailor shoes with the shining silver buckle for the hornpipe. I put on my hornpipe shoes and grabbed my box and bag of flags – I had three hundred left – and went off to the chapel.

Clip clip
, I went.
Clip clop
. I pretended to be a horse, and tried to beat out a pattern as I clopped along the stone pavement.

I met Margaretta outside her house on Malone Avenue.

She went to the Rory Murphy School of Irish Dancing and her costume was gorgeous. It was a white báinín dress, fitted to the waist and with a nice swirl to the skirt. It was heavily embroidered with Celtic spirals, red and pink and green, and was much closer to the dresses you see nowadays, the cartoon Celtic dresses in fluorescent colours, with the wigs of red ringlets. Margaretta even wore black tights, and her hornpipe shoes were neat and girlish, with a simple black strap, not like something
from
The Pirates of Penzance
. Of course, she didn't have a wig – nobody had then – but her own long, black hair was curly and nearly as nice as one of those wigs.

In other words, she looked stunning. She looked
Riverdance
. I didn't know either of those words but I felt them. I was like something made of tin that you'd get in a Christmas stocking and could wind up and send waddling across the floor, to crash into the leg of the chair. And she was a Barbie doll in a Mystical Mythical Celt costume, as graceful as a ballerina.

‘Good!' she said, approving of my outfit. ‘And now for the finishing touch!'

From behind a hedge in her front garden she took a bamboo stick, which she said was used to support sweet peas. (I knew there was another use for those bamboo canes: you could use them to cane children on their hands, or even on the bare bum. I wondered if Margaretta's mother or father did that to her. She would never have admitted it; no self-respecting child would.)

Margaretta opened her Confirmation handbag – on outings we always carried our handbags, which were identical, made of shiny white plastic, with big fake gold clasps. We loved them. She pulled out a pair of sunglasses. Put them on.

‘See! I'm blind!' she said, tapping the bamboo stick on the path.

‘Oh Margaretta!'

Could she be serious? The stick wasn't even white. It looked like a stick that had supported sweet peas in a garden. And her sunglasses were silly-looking toy glasses. No grown-ups wore sunglasses then, and the children's ones were made of soft plastic that wouldn't hook behind your ears and were always falling off. Margaretta's were pink, the colour of bubble gum.

‘You're leading me,' she said. ‘That's all you have to do. You don't have to be blind.'

‘What am I supposed to say? Help my poor blind friend?'

‘Say nothing. If anyone asks, “Is she blind?” just nod your big head.'

I nodded my big head and said nothing.

We took the bus across the river to Shandon on the other side of the city where nobody would know us. Just outside the chapel gate we stood, next to the newspaper stand. There were two other people there with flag boxes, two boys in grey shorts and blazers. They looked at us in amusement.