She chewed her lip. “But I’m not sure I want to label myself a feminist or an anything.”
“Grand.” Ruth yawned, leaning her head against the bus shelter. “All you have to be for this group is a woman. We don’t frisk for your opinions at the door.”
“But what’s so wonderful about women?” It sounded more sullen than Maria meant; that was her cold nose talking. But now that she’d said it, she had to go on. “I mean, we’re not actually sisters, we don’t really know each other even,” she stumbled. “Why would it be any different if a few guys were let in to speak for themselves?”
“Listen, I’ve worked in mixed groups. Take my word for it, they’re a waste of time.”
The hint of condescension set Maria’s teeth on edge. Would the bloody bus ever come? “I just don’t see what’s so wrong with men that we have to sit around whining about them.”
“Is that what it sounds like?” Ruth’s glance was puzzled.
She was too far in to retreat. “I suppose I just don’t have a problem with men as such.”
“Well, bully for you.”
Her throat hurt. “All I meant was—”
The eyes turned on her looked black in the shadow of the bus shelter. “Of course you wouldn’t see anything wrong with the little dotes, Maria, if you haven’t been raped, denied a job, or battered by one yet.”
“Neither have you.” Had she? Stupid, stupid thing to say.
The answer was reluctant. “I know plenty who have.”
Maria was flailing in deep water. There was no light but the white glare of the shelter, and the bus would never come. “Look,” Maria asked, focussing on the ground, “I know I’m ignorant, and some men are definitely bastards, but surely there’s nothing wrong with men as such?”
Ruth’s lips were uneven. “Maybe not, but there’s nothing wrong with women as such either, and that’s all a women’s group is. Christ, with all the hostility we arouse in this campus, you’d think we were terrorists.”
Maria watched the gravel shift under her foot.
“I can tell I’m boring you; if it’s not your scene, just forget it.”
Maria was considering whether, and then how, to say she was sorry when the bus trundled round the corner. It jogged them home, cold and wordless. In her head, as ever, the words flowed easily: I have no wish to hurt you, and teach me, and the room is warmer when you’re in it. Covertly, she watched the reflection of Ruth’s dark curls bump against the window beside her. Once their eyes met in the glass, and they almost smiled.
Was that him, slouching out of the photo booth? No plait. Not a bit like him, really.
“Personally speaking,” Yvonne began, “I’m bored out of my tree.”
Maria whipped her eyes back to her polystyrene coffee cup. They were squeezed into a corner of the Students’ Union, their heels up on a table overflowing with empty popcorn bags. “Ah, but you missed this morning’s major excitement,” said Maria, yawning. “The dean of arts called us in to the sports hall and gave us a lecture about the importance of mixing. The usual ‘best years of your lives’ crap, with an extra bit about love, or rather sex, seeing as we’re adults now.”
Yvonne tapped her ash onto the floor. “What did she advise?”
“She said, ‘Please don’t fall in love,’ with this fatuous simper on her face. As if it was just another of those irresponsible things that students get up to, like doodling on sculptures or roller-skating on the wheelchair ramps.”
Maria coughed slightly, and Yvonne moved her cigarette into her left hand and waved away the smoke. “Did she say why?”
“Apparently if we fall in love in first year, we’ll miss our chance to make oh so many new friends.”
“D’you think she was speaking from experience?”
“No doubt.” Maria decided not to chance the dregs of coffee; she balanced the cup delicately on top of the rubbish. “Probably dropped out pregnant in nineteen fifty-nine, had it down the country and put it up for adoption, came back to repeat first year as a model citizen.”
“She’s right, you know,” said Yvonne gloomily. “About the L word.”
“What, love? Of course she’s right. But it’s like saying, don’t eat a box of chocolates because it’ll spoil your appetite for dinner. I’d always go for the chocolates.”
“Me too,” said Yvonne lasciviously, folding back a linen cuff.
That simply had to be Damien, his orange sweatshirt just visible behind a pillar. It fascinated Maria, the way his huge hand cupped a thin French cigarette, which he sucked at from time to time in defiance of all the NO SMOKING signs.
“What’s so interesting?”
“Nothing. Just a poster.” Her head spun round. “I don’t know, Yvonne, maybe we’re just not suitable to grace the halls of academe.”
“The halls of what?”
“Here.”
“Oh.” Yvonne took one last drag and stubbed it out on a Coke can. “You’re probably right. I’m just here because everyone else is. I’ve no ambition to be a big success.”
“There’s more than one kind of success. You’ve managed to shift, what, three guys in less than three weeks of term.”
“Four, actually,” she smirked. “Did I not tell you about your man last Friday?”
“Lucky beast.”
The coy tone became serious. “It’s not luck, Maria, its hard work. Anyone can do it. Well, nearly anyone.” She took her feet off the table and sat up. “If you got your hair layered back like I was saying, and wore a tiny bit of lipstick, very pale—”
“I hate the taste of lipstick. No, I think I’ll leave you your train of admirers.”
Yvonne relapsed into gloom. “I don’t actually fancy any of them except Pete, and he doesn’t seem too serious about me.”
“Give him time.” The orange sweatshirt had disappeared. “Come on, it’s ten past already.”
The lecturer was in full flow, projecting images of monstrous canvases onto the screen. “Get an eyeful of that,” hissed Yvonne as they slid into the back row. “Didn’t know they had lezzie orgies in the seventeenth century.”
“It’s the Rape of the Sabine Women, twit. They’re clinging together for moral support.”
“Immoral, more like.” Yvonne slapped four different-colored markers down on her refill pad and turned to the main business of the day. “So, you fancy anyone yet?”
Maria rolled her eyes, then wrote out a neat header for her notes: Baroque War Scenes—Dr. Quentin—October 19.
Lowering her voice suggestively, Yvonne continued. “Romantically interested in any male humanoids at this point in time?”
“Lay off.”
Yvonne sighed. “You’re so self-reliant, I really respect that.” She began neatening her cuticles with the cap of her pen.
Maria didn’t dare look. She knew he was down eleven rows on her right, and if she cast a single glance in his direction, Yvonne would go on red alert. No doubt she would shudder at Maria’s taste; one was meant to fall for a long-limbed med student whose daddy had a BMW, or be obsessed with the firm jaw of a Law Soc smoothie. One was meant to aim higher than a bearded knowall in one’s own tutorial.
It was only three days ago that she’d noticed Damien at all. As he knotted himself into an argument with the tutor about aesthetic theory, she sat back and stared. When the hour was up he shoved his books into a battered briefcase and stalked off through the crowded corridor, eyes on his feet. She always kept an eye out for his lank braid at lectures after that. He never stooped to taking notes; beside a swarm of girls transcribing all the lecturer’s mediocrities, he sat like Julius Caesar.
After a glance at Yvonne, who was still preoccupied with her nails, Maria let her eyes slew down to him. Only the back of his head was visible, and one arm. Hold on, he did seem to be taking notes today—scribbling something on a pad. “Go on without me,” she told Yvonne when the lecture limped to a close. “I better finish taking down that structural diagram from the board.” Hunched
over her notes, she watched Damien through her hair. He was scrunching up his page and flicking it round the desk. She hung around for several minutes after his departure until the theatre had cleared, then ran down the steps and pounced on the document. It was a crudely executed sketch of a suckling sow.
She kept it, neatly labeled with the date and lecture theatre. Maria liked to label the detritus of the past. It scared her that in ten years’ time she might be a mother of four in a suburban semi, unable to remember anything.
“It’s going to boil over, I swear. Look at those bubbles.”
Ruth shot her arm under Maria’s to get at the switch. “All you had to do was turn it down.”
“But you said I wasn’t to stop stirring till the lumps disappeared,” Maria insisted. She dropped the wooden spoon for a second to scratch her forehead, and a drop of scalding milk splashed her wrist.
Hearing her yelp, Ruth took over. “Gimme, I’ll finish the white sauce. You could be greasing the dish.”
Maria yawned as she rolled down the sleeves of her cardigan. “Sorry to be useless. I don’t know how you can stand the stress of juggling pans.”
“Practice.”
She couldn’t see Ruth’s expression; steam clouded the features. “Are you pissed off with me?”
“Not at all.” The warm eyes turned on Maria. “Now don’t do your forlorn puppy act, I haven’t time to find you a biscuit.”
Maria busied herself with the ceramic dish, buttering its curves. When she had finished, she wandered over to the steamy window and peered down at the pavement. “Mucky day. Can’t make up its mind whether it’s raining or not. I think I spy our wee Jaelo Submarine hoving round the corner.”
Ruth came over, wiping her hands on her jeans. “That’ll be her. She looks so harmless from four flights up, doesn’t she? Like a carrot top floating in the gutter.”
“You can be such a bitch when you try,” said Maria appreciatively.
“Mostly I don’t try. It’s only fair to leave her something to be better at,” Ruth explained through a fingerful of white sauce. “You want to start breaking the pasta into pieces?”
A muffled ring from below. “She must have forgotten her key again,” said Maria. “Tell you what, I’ll run down, if you finish the lasagne.”
They tramped up the stairs arguing at full voice. “Would you believe it,” Maria announced as she slashed through the bead curtain, “this constipated cow had her key all the time.”
Jael blew a sardonic kiss at the cook and started to tug at the dripping zipper of her leather jacket. “Well I thought it was probably at the bottom of my bag, but I was too wet to be bothered rummaging for it. Especially as I knew there’d be a pair of seventeen-year-old legs just longing for some exercise.” She sidestepped a kick from one of the legs and got behind the sofa. “Besides, look what I have here.” She brandished a sodden copy of the College Echo like a matador’s red cloth.
“Did they print it?” demanded Ruth, looking up from the cheese grater.
“You bet your bottom they did. Listen to this for quality journalism, youngster. Top Profs Feel a Little Fresher.’”
“Ah, god love us, they couldn’t have called it that.” Ruth ran to grab the newspaper with sticky fingers. After a quick scan of the third page, she aimed a slap at Jael’s ear. “I knew you were lying, fiend.”
“Let’s see.” Maria pushed between their shoulders.
“They used the headline I suggested: STAFF IN SEXUAL HARASSMENT SCANDAL.”
Jael sank onto the sofa and put her boots up on the fireguard. “If you ask me, it’s libelous, even with the proper title. You make accusations of gross indecency against ‘a senior lecturer in the Department of Paleography,’” she went on, tugging open the top buttons of her purple silk shirt, “and there are only two of them.”
“It’s all based on objective research,” said Ruth, scrutinizing each paragraph.
Jael sniffed the air. “Is there a burning sauce in the house?” Ruth scuttled to the stove. “I love deflating her when she’s on an ego trip,” Jael whispered to Maria, clearing her a narrow place on the sofa.
“You mean when she’s a brilliant success.”
“Same difference,” said Jael lazily. “Ah, I suppose she’s better off keeping busy, it distracts her from her loveless life. We spinsters have to use up our energies somehow.”
Maria was licking the faint buttery taste off her little finger. The fire was dying into grey ash, but she was too deeply tucked into the sofa to move. “Speaking of our loveless lives,” she said, “don’t we eat a shocking amount?”
Jael’s face was dreamy as she patted the rounded belly of her jeans. “Well personally, I’m eating for two.”
“You are not.” Maria’s voice was not quite sure.
“I mean me and my ego.”
Toying with the fringe on the tartan blanket, Maria waited till the shake was gone from her voice. “No, but seriously, about food. I know I pay into the kitty, but you two are always buying extras. I amn’t offering to cough up any more, because I can’t afford to, but I feel a bit mean chomping my way through your sesame rolls and peaches.”
Jael erupted into laughter. She rested her heavy elbow on Maria’s shoulder and put on her huskiest Hollywood voice. “You can chomp your way through my peaches anytime, sweetheart.”
“I wouldn’t worry about it, Maria,” said Ruth, her voice muffled as she bent down to the oven. “I’m living off savings from my years as a civil serpent, and Lady Muck here gets monthly checks from her loving family.”
“Loving, is it?” snorted Jael. “All they love is their stud farm and their station wagon. They pay me to stay away.”
“That’s shameful,” said Maria.
“Isn’t it just! Thrust out into the cold at seventeen by my nearest and dearest.”
Maria couldn’t hide her smirk. “No, what I meant was, it’s shameful for a grown woman of twenty-nine to be still collecting pocket money.”
There was a short pause—had she managed to hit a nerve? She began plaiting the tartan fringe, three strings at a time.
Jael bounced back. “Every time I feel a pang of guilt, I remember that as a communist it’s my duty to squeeze my capitalist parents dry.”
“You’re a communist in your hole,” called Ruth, clanging cutlery in the sink.
“Especially there,” said Jael, giving Maria a lecherous wink.
Maria combed the blanket edge loose again and went over to dry the saucepans. “Yes, but what about me?” she asked Ruth as she took a dripping bowl from her hand. “It’s not my food.”
“You, my dear, are helping us to squander our ill-gotten gains,” called Jael, her chin on the sofa back. “We’d be buying the odd chocolate cake whether you were here or not, so don’t bother your pretty little head about it.”
Maria wiped between the tines of a fork. “But why did you advertise for a flatmate, then, if you could afford the flat yourselves?”
“Wasn’t my idea.” Jael snapped open the College Echo.
Ruth scrubbed at the edge of a plate with steel wire. “It’s hard to remember. It seems years ago.”
“You were lonely,” Jael prompted from behind the paper.
“Didn’t realise you’d noticed.” Ruth turned back to Maria, and her voice livened. “But it’s just as well you’re here, or we’d be at each other’s throats. One Sunday last summer we came to physical blows over who got to read the newspaper first.”
“Mmm,” said Jael, “and I remember who won.”
Maria looked from one to the other, as she folded up the damp cloth. “So I’m to consider myself some sort of cushion?”
“More like a kept woman,” suggested Jael.
“Now try O’Connell Street.”
“Shrawd Ee Cunl.”
“It’s a ch.” She pointed at the sign, three stories up. “Try again: Sráid Uí Chonaill.”
Galway twisted his mouth with effort. “Shroyige Ee Hunil. Oh, boy, I give up. Why c
an’t they spell it like it sounds?”
“It’s like a wartime code,” said Maria, watching for a gap in the cars. “The invaders aren’t supposed to be able to read the street names,” she called over her shoulder as she dashed across the street.
Galway followed her more cautiously. “I guess I won’t be fluent in Gaelic by Christmas, then? My grandma will be mad.”
“I wouldn’t waste your energy on a dying language,” Maria advised him. They crossed the bridge, skirting the beggar and her baby wrapped in a striped blanket. “I only know it because it was drilled into me for thirteen years; I’ll have purged my mind of it soon enough.”
He paused to peer over a scrolled parapet to the dank Liffey rolling forty feet below. “You shouldn’t deride your heritage,” he told her when she joined him. “Smell that.”
She bent obediently for a sniff.
“Full of bones and battle-axes, that smell is. Pure history.”
“Dead fish, and Guinness leaking from the export ships, more like.” Maria straightened up. “I’ve had enough bloody history for one morning. I was tired when I woke up, and those cathedral steps nearly finished me off. If I’d known you were going to be such an enthusiast, I’d never have brought you.”
He caught her up at the traffic island. “I’ve just noticed that all the shops are shut. Has there been a bomb alert or something?”
“Sunday, remember? The Lord will smite thee if thou buyest a packet of biscuits.” She led him round College Green. “Which reminds me, I’ve missed mass. Still, my mother used to say it’s all right if you visit a cathedral instead, so I suppose they have their uses.”
“But wasn’t the Viking settlement awesome? And that trash heap, with bits of eggshell from prehistoric dinners?”
“Please, I’ve had no breakfast.” As they rounded the blackened facade she said, “We should probably go and gaze at the Book of Kells, but I’d rather a coffee and a cherry bun.”
“I have to tell you, I’m totally broke.”
“Galway, may I buy you a small beverage out of my grant money? Come on, let me feel rich. New Men are meant to be into role reversal.”