For Christ’s sake, I thought in disbelief. I mean, for Christ’s sake.
I gave him a few minutes to turn around and grin and say ‘Ha ha, only joking, do you want to see my knob?’ But he just kept walking.
All I could see was his back getting further and further away from me and the sound of his boots becoming fainter. Then he turned the corner and I couldn’t see or hear anything.
Still I waited, hoping to see his head appear back around the corner as if it was on a stick, but nothing doing.
When I finally accepted that I had no other option, I stamped up the stairs, disappointment bitter in my mouth. ‘What was his game?’ I muttered. Seriously, just what the hell was he up to?
Desperate for some clues as to Luke’s motives, I tore open the little parcel he’d given me, far too agitated to appreciate the beautiful wrapping paper and the shiny little bow on it. But all it was was a book of Raymond Carver’s poems.
‘Poems?’ I screeched, in disgust. ‘I want a ride.’ And I threw the book at the wall.
I slammed and banged things around the apartment. Brigit, the bitch, wasn’t home, so I had no one to complain to.
Viciously, I ripped off the saucy underwear, berating myself for putting it on in the first place. I should have known I was tempting fate. I felt as if the lacy suspender belt and silky stockings and the little knickers were all having a good laugh at me. ‘You’d think she’d have learnt by now,’ they chuckled to each other. Bastards.
Eventually, at a completely loose end, I realized I had no option but to go to bed. Fully certain that I was too revved up to get even a minute’s sleep, I threw my grownup dress on the floor and kicked it round the room a bit. (I’d already hung it up, but I went back into the wardrobe and took it off the hanger, and kicked the crap out of it, as I searched for a scapegoat for my lone status.) In the middle of me breathlessly promising the dress that that was the last time it would ever see the light of day, the phone rang.
‘Who the hell is that?’ I wondered, hoping it would be a wrong number so I could shout at them.
‘I’m not finished with you yet,’ I threatened the grownup dress, where it cringed against the wall, as I went to answer the phone.
‘HELLO,’ I roared aggressively into the mouthpiece.
‘Er, is that you Rachel?’ a man’s voice asked.
‘YES,’ I admitted belligerently.
‘It’s Luke.’
‘AND?’
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to disturb you, I’ll talk to you tomorrow,’ he said humbly.
‘No wait! Why are you ringing?’
‘I was worried, you see, after tonight.’
I said nothing, but my heart was beating quickly with relief.
‘I thought I was doing the right thing,’ he said quickly. ‘Trying to be a gentleman, I wanted to change the pattern with you and me, you know, to move things forward. But then after I got home I thought maybe I wasn’t clear enough, and that you might just think I don’t like you anymore when I’m mad about you, so I thought I’d ring you, then I thought it might be too late and you’d be asleep, maybe it is too late and you’re asleep…’
‘What are you trying to say?’ By now I was very excited. I could feel his anxiety, his desire to do the right thing. Was a declaration of love on the cards ? Was he going to ask me to be his girl?
Then he stopped being serious and the laugh reappeared in his voice. ‘I suppose a ride is out of the question?’
Insulted to the core and bitterly disappointed, I slammed the phone down.
I gibbered with outrage. Gibbered, so I did. ‘Can you belie…? Did you hear what he just said?’ I demanded from the room at large and my grown-up dress in particular.
‘The cheek of him; the cheek of him.’
I shook my head in disbelief. ‘If he thinks I’ll give him the time of day after that sort of behaviour, he has another think coming…’
I sighed in a more-in-sorrow-than-in-anger way and enjoyed another appalled shake of my head.
‘Honestly…’ I exhaled in disgust.
Six seconds later I found myself picking up the phone.
Of course a ride wasn’t out of the question.
45
Another weekend. Two days free from the fear of the questionnaire.
Despite that relief, my emotions were still in complete disarray.
Terrible sadness came and went, came and went. I was actually glad when I was angry or heartbroken about Luke, because at least I could identify the feeling.
Saturday morning kicked off with cookery, as always.
And, of course, we had the usual scuffle involving Eamonn and a foodstuff, this time a tin of cocoa powder, which culminated in Eamonn being led away, as he invariably was on a Saturday morning.
We all covertly watched Angela, wondering if – hoping, really – she’d do something similiar. But Angela was nothing like Eamonn, she’d behaved herself beautifully at the previous week’s session.
In fact, if it wasn’t for her breathtaking girth, you’d never know she had a problem with nosh because she never seemed to eat. I had overheard her telling Misty that she had terrible trouble with her glands and a criminally slow metabolism. Which could have been true.
Either that or she locked herself in the bathroom three times a day and secretly ate the contents of a medium-sized supermarket. One or the other. I suspected the latter. I would have said that a lot of hard, dedicated work went into maintaining an arse as big as hers.
I was surprised that Misty didn’t point that out, but Misty was very nice to her. Which made me wonder moodily why she couldn’t be nice to me. The little bitch.
It took a while for Betty to get everyone organized with flour and sugar and mixing-bowls and sieves and all the rest.
Clarence kept putting his hand up and saying ‘Teacher.’
And Betty kept saying ‘Call me Betty.’
And Clarence kept saying ‘OK, teacher.’
And then a peace descended on the room. Everyone was concentrating so hard, their brown jumpers covered with flour, that I became aware of a charged atmosphere in the room. A strange harmony that was spine-tingling. Almost as… almost as, as if we were in the presence of the divine, I was surprised to find myself thinking.
Then I was floored by massive embarrassment for thinking such new-age-wankology. Next I’d be reading The Celestine Prophecy, if I didn’t watch myself!
But shortly afterwards, I had another attack of acute sentimentality. When the men took their lopsided, misshapen, burnt, raw-in-the-middle, flopped cakes out of the oven, the pride they had in their creations made my eyes well up. Each of these cakes was a little miracle, I thought, as I shed a discreet tear. These men are alcoholics and some have done terrible things, but they have made a cake all by themselves…
Then I cringed.
I couldn’t believe what I’d just been thinking.
Thank Christ there’s no one here who can read minds, I reassured myself.
I found Saturday nights the hardest in the Cloisters. Humiliated that the whole world was getting dressed up and going out. Everyone except me. But worse than that, I was tormented with worry about Luke. Saturday night was when he was most likely to meet another girl. It did my head in.
I completely forgot I was angry with him. Instead I ached, longed for him, while feeling crazed with jealousy and fear of losing him. Even though it was obvious that I’d already lost him. But if he met someone else, then I really had lost him.
I tried to take my mind off him with the usual Saturday night games. I’d played them the previous week, but half-heartedly. I’d been embarrassed by them, constantly imagining what people like Helenka and other glamorous New York people would say if they could see me. I’d kept casting my eyes to Heaven and risking, just in case Helenka had psychic powers. So that she’d realize I was only doing it because I had to and that I certainly wasn’t enjoying myself. Games! My whole demeanour cried. How cringy!
But th
is week, I was surprised to discover just how much fun it was. First, we split up into teams and played Red Rover, running the length of the freezing sitting-room and breaking through the barriers of other people’s arms. It was alarmingly exhilarating.
Then someone produced a skipping rope.
I had a bad few minutes in the middle of the skipping, as everyone else was being ‘called in’ except me. Exactly the same thing had happened throughout my youth and I felt sulky and angry and left out.
I slunk over to the wall and threw myself down on a chair. Even if someone calls me in, I thought angrily. I’m not bloody going.
‘Are you enjoying yourself ?’ Chris appeared at my side.
The hairs stood up on my skin. God, I fancied him. Those eyes, those thighs… One day, I thought longingly. Maybe one day me and him will be in New York together, majorly in love… Then Misty was called in to the skipping and my envy blotted out all else.
‘They make me sick here,’ I said bitterly. ‘They really do. Making us remember our childhood like this.’
‘That’s not why we do this.’ Chris sounded astonished. ‘It’s because we enjoy it, we let off a bit of steam. Anyway, what’s wrong with remembering your childhood?’
I said nothing.
Chris looked concerned.
Vaguely, I could hear Misty, who was skipping like a dainty, little elf singing ‘… And I call Chri-is in…’
‘If you find it that awful to remember, you’d better tell them in group,’ Chris said.
‘Oh God, it’s my go!’ he exclaimed and leapt up into the middle of the rope with Misty.
John Joe was turning the rope with Nancy, the housewife who was addicted to Valium. Even though everyone was clumsy and falling round the room, Nancy and John Joe were just that little bit too uncoordinated. In fact, Nancy was barely able to stand.
I watched Chris as he skipped. Ungainly and awkward, but very cute. His face was a picture of concentration as he tried hard to get it right.
I sat there feeling miserable, listening to them all chanting the skipping song, when I heard Chris singing the words ‘… And I caaallll Rachel in.’
Joyfully, I jumped up. I loved being called in and I never was. Never. It was always the bigger girls.
Or the smaller ones.
I leapt into the turning rope and skipped along with Chris for a few seconds, smiling shyly with the joy of being picked. Then Chris’s lovely lizard-skin chelsea boots got tangled up in the rope, and I tripped and the pair of us fell sprawling onto the floor. There was a delicious second of lying next to him and then John Joe threw a little fit and said he was sick of turning the rope. In a surge of unexpected magnanimity, I found myself turning the rope with glassy-eyed Nancy. She was so lost in the tranquillizer wilderness she terrified me.
After John Joe had almost broken every bone in his own and the bodies around him, it was time for musical chairs. Initially, I was afraid of being rough and pushing others off the chairs and onto the floor. Except for when it was Misty, of course. But, when I realized the whole idea was to be as vicious as possible, I really began to have a good time. Laughing and gasping, tussling and fighting, I felt I’d never enjoyed myself so much before. Without drugs, I mean.
And it wasn’t until I was going to bed, and I thought of Luke in New York, probably just about to go out, that my happiness evaporated.
On Sunday morning every man in the Cloisters, including Chris, I was sorry to say, approached me and said ‘Will that sister of yours be coming today?’
‘I don’t know,’ I had to tell them. But, when visiting time rolled around, Helen appeared with Mum and Dad. No sign of Anna, unfortunately. Dad was still talking in his Oklahoma voice.
When I got Helen on her own – Mum and Dad were deep into a conversation with Chris’s parents, I dreaded to think what they were talking about – I slipped her the letter requesting Anna to visit me bearing narcotics.
I said to Helen ‘Would you give that to Anna?’
‘But I won’t see her,’ said Helen. ‘I’ve a job.’
‘You’ve a job?’ I was very surprised. Not only was Helen notoriously lazy, but, like me, she couldn’t actually do anything. ‘Since when?’
‘Wednesday night.’
‘Doing what?’
‘Waitress.’
‘Where?’
‘In a fucking…’ She paused as she searched for the right word. ‘… A fucking abattoir in Temple Bar called Club Mexxx.’
‘That’s with three xs,’ she added. ‘That should tell you something about it.’
‘Well, er, congratulations,’ I said. Although I wasn’t at all sure they were appropriate. Like saying congratulations to your friend when she’s just found out she’s pregnant, but has no boyfriend to speak of.
‘Look, it’s not my fault that I was too short to be an air hostess!’ she suddenly exclaimed.
‘I didn’t know you’d applied to be a trolley dolly,’ I said, in surprise.
‘Well, I did,’ she said moodily. ‘And I wouldn’t mind, but it wasn’t even a proper airline, it was one of those crappy charter ones, Air Paella, that’d employ anyone. Except me.’
I was in shock because her disappointment was so tangible. She’d always got exactly what she wanted. She put her face in her hands in a gesture of despair that frightened me. ‘I wouldn’t mind, Rachel, but I had everything else perfect, I looked just the part.’
‘How d’you mean?’
‘You know, the inch-thick tangerine foundation, the white neck, the scary, pretend smile, the visible panty line. Not to mention the selective deafness. I would have been brilliant!
‘I practised very hard, Rachel,’ she said, her bottom lip trembling. ‘I really did. I was horrible to every woman I met and slimed all over every man. I practised opening the freezer door and standing beside it and nodding and giving a fake smile and saying, “Thanksbyebyethanks-thanksbyebye thanksthanksbye thanksthanks byebyebye”, for hours, but they said I was too short. “What do I need to be tall for?” I asked them. And they said to put things in the overhead lockers. Well, that’s a load of shite as anyone knows, because if you’re an air hostess it’s your job to ignore all the women and let them do everything themselves. And if it’s a man who needs help, you just flash him your jugs and get him to do it himself too. And he’ll be glad to do it. Thrilled.’
‘Why the freezer door?’
‘Because where they stand when the people are getting off is always cold, see?’
‘Well, er, it was a good idea to practise,’ I said awkwardly.
‘Practise!’ Mum had reappeared. ‘I’ll give her practise. She defrosted a freezer load of Magnums and crispy pancakes on me with her “Thanksbyebyethanks”. Practise, indeed!’
‘They were only mint Magnums,’ said Helen. ‘Not worth the space they took up, it was a mercy killing, the humane thing to do.’
Mum continued to make tutty, disapproving noises as if she was Skippy the bush kangaroo trying to convey that Bruce had fallen out of the seaplane, had fractured his arm in three places and needed rescuing from a swamp full of crocodiles.
‘Anyway, yeah, like, thanks for all the support, Mum,’ Helen burst out, as though she was twelve. ‘I suppose you just wish I never got a job.’
I waited for her to explode ‘I never asked to be born,’ and slam from the room.
But then we all remembered where we were and put a lid on it.
Mum moved away again. This time to bond with Misty O’Malley’s parents. Dad was still knee-deep in conversation with Chris’s father.
‘So have you any stamps?’ I turned to Helen. If she wouldn’t give the letter to Anna, then I’d try and post the bloody thing. Slip it into the outgoing post without anyone knowing.
‘Me?’ Helen demanded. ‘Stamps? Do I look like I’m married?’
‘What are you talking about?’
‘Only married people carry stamps around with them, everyone knows that.’
‘Well, never m
ind,’ I said. It had just occurred to me – how could I have ever forgotten? – that in five days, the three weeks I’d contracted to stay for would be up. I could freely leave. No bloody way would I elect to stay for the full two months like the rest of them. I’d be off like a shot. Then I could take as many drugs as I liked.
46
After the visitors left, Sunday Afternoon Suffocation suddenly descended on me. The bleak, dissatisfied sensation that if something didn’t happen soon, if something didn’t change, I would burst.
I roamed restlessly from the dining-room to the sitting-room to my bedroom and back again, unable to settle anywhere. I felt like a caged animal.
I yearned to be in the outside world where I could kickstart events by getting off my face. Springboard my emotions from the grey, misty depths of depression to the clear blue sky of happiness. But in the Cloisters there was nothing to ejector-seat me.
I consoled myself with the thought that it was my last Sunday afternoon in the kip. That in less than a week I wouldn’t have to feel those feelings anymore.
But, with a throb of undiluted angst, I realized I’d felt such restlessness and emptiness in the past. Often. It usually kicked in at about four o’clock on a Sunday, but had arrived slightly late today, no doubt still on New York time.
Maybe it would follow me, when I left the Cloisters.
Maybe, I agreed. But at least then I’d be able to do something about it.
All the other inmates were getting on my nerves, with their bickering and bantering. Mike was in a right fouler, parading round, pawing the ground, looking more like a bull than ever. He remained tightlipped about the source of his bad humour, but Clarence told me that Mike’s bratty son Willy had greeted his father by saying ‘There’s the alco-pop.’
‘What???’ Mike had demanded.
‘Alco-pop,’ sang Willie. ‘You’re me da, so you’re my pop, and you’re an alco. Put it together and you’re an alco-pop!’