Chestnut Street

“Why should I?”

  “Well, if you’re a pal of his sister that means you have something in common—that’s how marriages often start.”

  “If you knew so much, Jim, why didn’t you marry?”

  “I was stupid, kept thinking I had to have a nest egg, and by the time I did have a proper nest egg, I was old and set in my ways and it was no use to me,” he said.

  Jim O’Brien had a disconcerting habit of saying something simple and vulnerable when they expected him to be sour and putting people down.

  When Finbarr came home next, Jim suggested that he form part of the Sunday lunch.

  “Why did we never meet you when we were young, Jim?” Finbarr asked casually as they were doing the washing up.

  “I was half cracked and took a dislike to your mother, quite wrongly as it turned out,” Jim said.

  “Oh, why do you think you did that?” Finbarr asked.

  “Young fellas are eejits. Look at you yourself now and that gorgeous girl under your very nose and you don’t even notice her,” Jim said.

  “What gorgeous girl?”

  “Suzanne.”

  Finbarr nodded. “She’s a fine girl, all right.”

  “So what are you drying dishes with me for? Why aren’t you asking her out?” Jim wanted to know.

  “I’ll kill him, your wonderful uncle. Kill him with my bare hands,” Suzanne hissed in the next room.

  Fay laughed. “Ah, go on, Suzanne—someone has to light a fire under him.”

  “Yeah, wait until he does something heavy trying to get a fellow for you,” Suzanne grumbled.

  But she combed her hair and put on a little more lipstick, and when Finbarr suggested a walk along the canal she was ready to show him the way.

  “What are you doing for Christmas Day, Fay?” her uncle asked when the others were gone and the two of them sat and had a cup of tea together to end the Sunday ceremony.

  She was surprised. “Why do you ask?”

  “Well, it’s not going to be a Sunday, you see, and I wonder would our arrangement extend to us having a Christmas dinner together? I have enjoyed these Sunday lunches, you know. It’s worked out from my point of view very well.”

  “Sure, of course, Jim.”

  “And you, do you think the arrangement is working?” He seemed anxious for her approval.

  “Certainly I do.”

  “But you’d like a fellow of your own?” Now he sounded even more anxious.

  “Well someday, yes, Jim, not today necessarily.”

  “But you’re not rushing away? Not this minute?”

  “No, of course not, now that you’ve fixed my brother up with Suzanne, I’ll sit on with you for a bit.”

  “Good.”

  They sat there amicably, and an hour later a man knocked on the door. He was Billy Young, a financial adviser. He seemed delighted to meet Fay. Her uncle had spoken about her a lot, and had said she was a rock of sense.

  “You’re very pretty for a rock of sense,” he said admiringly.

  “Thanks, Billy,” Fay said.

  “Well, I’ll get back to being an adviser,” Billy said with a grin that broke her heart.

  She went up to her room and remembered that she had to call Nurse Williams tomorrow for the regular check about whether it had worked out well or not. Had it been a success?

  She lay on her bed and looked out over Chestnut Street. It had been a success. How dull that looked when written on an official form.

  I was sick to death of those Fifth Form girls confiding in me.

  “You’re so understanding, miss,” they would say in a treacly tone that always won me over. Of course I was understanding, nicer, more liberal than their parents, younger, more interested in them than the other teachers … no wonder they loved me. Full of good, hearty advice about everything.

  “Well, if he didn’t dance with you last night, Susie, perhaps he’s got something else on his mind, exams maybe. No? He danced with other girls. I see—well, it could be that he hasn’t the courage to ask you; boys can be shy too, you know. He’s not shy—he’s a bit of a showoff. I see. Well, perhaps that’s an extreme form of nervousness. He’s a teenager too, and we all show nervousness in different ways. Why don’t you pretend that you don’t mind at all, and dance with other people happily; if he sees you looking happy and relaxed, he might pluck up courage …” And then, weeks later: “I am glad it worked. No, don’t thank me—it was only your own common sense …” And weeks later: “Well, I suppose boys change their minds the same way as girls do … No, Susie, I don’t think that your heart is actually cracking; I think it would be very foolish to be a nun just now. I know it would show him, but think of all those years as a nun and the getting up early on cold mornings and the funny clothes you’d have to wear. Much wiser to be an academic—he’d be really pissed off over that.”

  And the same in the staff room. Never a problem of my own, always somebody else’s. “I know, I know, Miss O’Brien, it is very hard, of course it is, but you know I get the feeling that Mr. Piazza would be more upset than relieved if you arrived at his house and told his wife everything. Oh, I do see your point about total honesty, but Mr. Piazza might have thought of that one evening as something more … well, not so much casual … but something lovely just to happen once, to be a beautiful memory. It would change from being a beautiful memory into a problem if you were to tell Mrs. Piazza about his having said he had loved you for years. No, don’t cry, Miss O’Brien, please. I’m sure he did and does love you, but there are different degrees of love, especially to an Italian music master. I think his love for you is more the admiring-you-as-you-take-the-girls-out-to-hockey type of love than the leaving-his-wife-and-seven-children-and-renting-a-small-room-with-you sort.”

  When would I have a problem of my own? Not amongst my friends out of school either; they had too many that had to be dealt with first. There was Lisa, who had this white, drawn look for ages and we all knew she had some dark brooding secret, but while that’s all everyone else was ever to know, I was the one who had to hear about the man in the bank who had discovered the foolproof way to transfer money out of other people’s accounts into Lisa’s, so that they could eventually have a small fortune and run away and live in a white house beside the sea on a Greek island and cook kebabs at night and drink wine and make love on the beach for the rest of their lives. It was a case of “Well, of course it sounds idyllic and we all have a right to happiness, and I know there is hellish inequality in the world and that grabbing what you can is one way of dealing with it, but you know those cases of people who are found out and who go to gaol. Well, certainly he’s very clever and brilliant and fired by love and all that, but who exactly is he taking it from? I mean, won’t somebody notice that they’re being robbed? Oh, Lisa, stop crying. I didn’t say he was a robber, I just said it’s not without its pitfalls.”

  And there was my great pal Donal, so good-looking that he had a problem every week trying to disentangle himself from yet another situation and get into a further one. “Donal, of course I agreed with you that she is being unreasonable to want to get engaged after such a short time, but on the other hand you did make her leave her own flat and move into yours. She has to say something to her mother, you know, just some kind of hopeful words. I see, well then you should be very honest, shouldn’t you? Remember the last times you were so honest, you were always glad afterwards. I know, I know, but women do get upset about things. No, I know I’m different, but then I’m your friend, I’m not one of your girls, but listen to me. There’s no point in telling her you have consumption, and it wouldn’t be fair to her; she’ll agree to it anyway and swear to stay and nurse you for the rest of her life. You’ll have to say it was all a mistake and you’re sorry, and you’ll have to help her find another flat. No, I don’t think she’d find a revolting liver ailment a turnoff either—remember that actress, the one you told that you had gout. She still sends you telegrams at work saying ‘ratfink.’ Come on, it’ll only take a we
ekend to do it, and then you’ll both be free for the rest of your lives.”

  It seemed to be years of helping other people have pregnancy tests done, abortions arranged, cover stories created, years and years of inviting certain people to parties so that other people could pounce on them, centuries of being asked to go over and distract some girl who was showing too much interest in someone else’s man, a lifetime of giving sound middle-of-the-road, unpaid agony column advice.

  So one Thursday afternoon at four o’clock when school broke up, I decided that I would get a giant-size problem of my own. I would plunge myself wholeheartedly into a situation that would be so terrible and insoluble that at least half a dozen of my friends would have to hold consultations about it, would have to take me aside for serious conferences, would have to take me out of myself to get me over it. Somebody else was going to have a sleepless night or two over me, and I was going to behave unreasonably throughout the whole thing … consistently asking for advice, and then never listening to it, let alone taking it.

  It was hard to think of a desperate situation to enter as I was walking down the leafy road from the school with exercise books under my arm. Where did everyone else find them? Often they were a result of some happy drunken gathering, so I supposed I could begin there. But it was a bit early to get drunk, so I went home and planned it out on paper the same way that I would have organized a history teaching schedule for the year. First I made a list of places that I could get drunk in that evening. Selectivity was the problem since pubs there are in plenty. I chose about four where I thought there might be actors, or writers, or artists, or public relations men, which a lifetime of listening had taught me to recognize as problem men.

  Then I made another list of the kind of clothes I should wear. Not the gray skirt, gray jumper and white blouse that always seemed fine for school and the gentle evenings out that I was used to. It had better be something problem-creating, so I tried on a blouse that was too small, a skirt that was too tight, jewelry that was too flashy and perfume that was too perfumey, and put all the makeup I had on my face. In honesty I thought I looked very silly indeed but perhaps it was the kind of appearance that would attract some married homosexual who had robbed a bank to put me in a position where I might be expecting twins, about to be arrested and hiding from gangs who were pledged to destroy me.

  In the first bar the barman said inexplicably, “Is it raining outside?” This gave me a lot of cause for thought in case it might be a code or something, and what he really meant was the man in the corner would like to make me an offer I couldn’t refuse about white slave traffic. What he really meant was that my mascara was running in six black lines down my face and my skirt looked as if it had shrunk in a sudden shower. I cleaned my face, which made me look as if someone had beaten me up, but that was fine too, because at least it looked adventurous and not comfortable. I didn’t want to look comfortable, under any circumstances. But nobody came over and lit a cigarette for me and nobody said anything except to ask was the seat beside me taken. So I moved on.

  In the next bar there seemed to be a livelier lot. At least there was a great argument going on between some howling drunks about the words of “The Listeners.” It seemed ideal as a situation to include myself, and serendipity that I knew the words. Inch by inch I got nearer, as drunkenly they criticized each other’s versions, and almost accidentally I seemed to get included in their rounds. The only thing they wouldn’t do was let me speak. Each time they ordered they said, “A gin and tonic for the lady,” but I never got any words in at all. I filed it away as a useful way of becoming drunk cheaply because nobody asked what I was doing there, but, unflatteringly, nobody seemed to have the slightest interest either. I offered to buy a round, hoping to earn some hearing or at least attention this way. “Never let a woman pay,” they all chorused, and I took it as some kind of bonus that they at least realized that a woman I was.

  It was getting late and they were buying beer to take home with them. It was going to continue in some flat, so I’d better stay with it, I thought. I bought half a dozen and they were put in a brown paper bag, and I tagged along hopefully with them to the bus stop. There, unfortunately, they hailed a taxi, and as I was getting in too, they shook their heads. “Can’t take you with us,” they said.

  “I’ve bought my beer and everything,” I said tearfully.

  “Simon wouldn’t like it—must never take another man’s woman, first rule,” they told me.

  “I don’t know anyone called Simon.” I pleaded that I wasn’t Simon’s bird—they must be thinking of someone else.

  “Well, why were we drinking with you all night if you weren’t Simon’s bird?” they asked unanswerably and left me on the pavement with all this beer. There was a discotheque nearby, so there I went. The average age of everyone dancing in the strobe lighting was at least ten years younger than mine, and many of the dancers were fifteen years below me. But I’d paid to get in, so, clutching my beer, I stood by the wall. Sudden shouts of recognition and delight. The whole Fifth Form seemed to be there. No wonder they are too weak to retain any history, I thought gloomily. They were ecstatic to see me. Not in the least surprised.

  “I brought you some beer,” I said helpfully.

  Nothing could have been more acceptable. The prices at the disco were very steep; they had run out of drinking money. Their boyfriends were enchanted with me—what a schoolteacher, what a woman; they whistled appreciatively. None of them asked me to dance—you don’t dance with someone as old as me. Any thoughts of a hopeless, problem-filled relationship of the Tea and Sympathy kind vanished. I said I had to be moving on.

  One of my friends had got into dire trouble by being approached by a conference businessman in a big hotel. Maybe that would be the best thing to try now, considering the lateness of the hour. There was no trouble getting into the hotel and no trouble meeting conference businessmen. The only trouble was that they were all whey-faced and lined and eating tranquilizers and talking about output and the product and the recession and looking at clipboards. It had been a bad day, and tomorrow was going to be a worse one. I asked one of them casually had he seen the play Death of a Salesman. He looked at me wildly.

  “No,” he squeaked. “God, were we meant to have seen it?”

  Then they all started going off to bed and making big scenes at the desk about being called at 6:30 a.m. and having breakfasts with no cholesterol in them, and would their shoes definitely be cleaned, and had the hotel realized that if it forgot to call them, there would be a high-level investigation and heads would roll. There wasn’t a pleasure-loving out-of-towner in the bunch, so I thought I’d better go to the phone and try and raise some excitement that way. Anything to get their haunted, hunted faces and their ulcers out of my mind.

  I rang Donal in case he might be having a party. He wasn’t. He was making the final and potentially successful advances to an air hostess; my phone call had ruined it, and she was getting her coat. It had given her those few seconds she needed to clear her head. He was less than delighted to hear from me.

  I rang Judy, who sits up all night drinking black coffee and having intense conversations with hopeless cases, men she loves passionately. They drain her and she drains them so emotionally that there’s a kind of atmosphere of drama and stress hovering around the place like ectoplasm. She was deliriously happy that I had called; she had been hunting for me all night. She had this appalling situation. Sven was out in the kitchen trying to put his head into the oven; he’d been at this for hours. It was all too terrible. I remembered Sven, didn’t I? He had been living in the commune because his analyst had said he needed a lot of giving and taking, but really Sven had been doing all the giving and none of the taking. Judy wanted him to come and live with her. Sven said that he was a disappointment to everyone, to the analyst, to the commune, to Judy … he could see nothing but the gas oven, really … it was all so bleak, Judy said … so draining.

  I pretended we had been cut off
. I kept shouting, “Hallo, hallo!” and then hung up.

  The taxi man told me on the way home to Chestnut Street that all women were scum. He had always half believed it deep down, but now he knew it. Scum. And his wife was the cream of the scum. She had been carrying on with a neighbor for months, apparently. He had only just discovered and faced her with it. Tried to defend herself, she had. Scummy thing that she was. Said she had been lonely, what with his irregular hours. What would make a woman do a thing like that, lady, he asked me, hoping that I would set him straight.

  “Scummishness,” I said. And we fell silent.

  At home there was a letter from a friend whose husband had been behaving oddly. She thought he might be having an affair with someone at the office. He was beginning to look lined and whey-faced and was taking a lot of tranquilizers. I wrote her a quick postcard saying that it was all nonsense. He was only caught up in the rat race like all those businessmen I had seen that night; he couldn’t have time for another woman. And then I tore it up. Why was I always consoling my friends and none of them were consoling me?

  I had a cup of some drink they say soothes away the cares of the day and gives you healing sleep. I hoped that it might also soothe away all the gin so uselessly downed during the evening, and prevent a hangover. It would be irony indeed to have to face a day of teaching with my head hammering and not a problem to show for it.

  And then the phone rang. It was two o’clock; it had to be someone who was pregnant or who wasn’t, some voice complaining that yet another disastrous romance was fizzling out on her sofa or in her gas oven. Wearily I answered. It sounded like a very drunk man.

  “Yes?” I said, resigning myself.

  “I’m very drunk,” said the voice, a bit unnecessarily but with a need for definition of terms before we started. “I had to be drunk, otherwise I’d never have had the courage to ring you. I fancy you enormously, I think I love you, actually, I’m not sure about loving you, but I do know that I need you. I’ll have to meet you properly, I can’t bear all these hypocritical chats we have, talking about things that don’t matter like scholarships, and homework, and the need to study. I want to talk about you, yourself, and me, and myself. I want to walk in the country with you. I want to have dinner with you in lovely places, and hold you and look after you.”