Aunt Elizabeth had been born in this house forty-seven years ago, and look at her now. It could happen to Vanessa too. She looked at her reflection, tousled, grubby even, her school shirt torn at the collar, her skirt stained with food and pen marks.
“There’s no money for new clothes or anything,” Vanessa said as she saw she was being observed. She half hoped that some financial help might be offered, but then Dad always said that Lizzie still had her confirmation money.
“So you’ll have to learn to look after what clothes you do have, I suppose.” Her aunt was vague, as if it had nothing to do with her.
“And my hair?” Vanessa looked despairing.
“Go to Lilian Harris at Number Five.”
“Yes, but again, where would I get the money to pay her?”
“Do something for her instead—you know, take her mother for a walk, do the shopping one day a week, then she can give you a proper haircut every month.”
It was a possibility, certainly.
“It would be easier if you were here,” Vanessa said, looking at her very elegant aunt, who was creaming her long, slim hands carefully. Ma’s hands were cracked and red and had never known hand cream.
“You can write to me, Vanessa, telling me your progress.”
“And maybe come and see you in New York one day?” Vanessa was daring.
“One day, maybe.”
Vanessa had heard warmer invitations in her young life. But she was not going to get moody about it. “Let’s go down for supper. Ma’s making shepherd’s pie as a treat for your last night here and she’s inviting Miss Mack and Bucket Maguire.”
“That’s nice.” Aunt Elizabeth made it sound as if some poison were being prepared for them. “Remember, don’t eat any of the mashed potato on top, Vanessa, no bread and butter, and try to encourage your mother to have salads in future.”
During supper Vanessa Byrne watched her tired mother, her impatient father and her ill-mannered brothers, Eamonn and Sean, gobbling up the shepherd’s pie. She never felt more like a traitor than that evening as she nibbled at the meat part of the pie and halved a tomato with her aunt. It was as if she had crossed a line, changed sides.
She wrote for advice three times to Aunt Elizabeth in New York. Always she got a frank and helpful reply. Yes, indeed, Vanessa should take a Saturday job in a restaurant but she must choose a smart place, and insist that they give her a uniform to wear. An entirely fictitious reference was sent from New York to help her get such a job.
No, it would be very foolish and time wasting for Vanessa to try to learn to play the piano. She was too old to start a musical education at fifteen, she would be better to borrow CDs from the library and learn to appreciate music made by others.
And yes, Vanessa would be well advised to go to any poetry readings, book launches or cultural events that she heard of around Dublin. She would meet a lot of interesting people this way.
And Vanessa did. Including Owen, who was twenty-two and couldn’t believe that Vanessa was still at school. She was going to write about this to her aunt, but something stopped her. Like the fact that she had never asked Owen back home to Chestnut Street. Like that she didn’t want to tell her aunt that she was having sex with Owen.
Aunt Elizabeth came over, as usual, the following summer. She was impressed by Vanessa’s bedroom. It was cool and elegant. Vanessa had very few clothes these days but those she had were well cared for. Vanessa’s mother confided to her sister-in-law that the girl had become distant and secretive. Her father said that Nessa was a proper pain in the arse. Eamonn and Sean said little except to hint that they were broke to the hilt.
Vanessa was slimmer, and different somehow to last year. Her hair was short and blond and shiny. She brought her aunt to an open-air concert, the launch of a poetry book and an antiques exhibition. Everywhere Vanessa knew people or nodded at them. She was confident and so definitely on her way out of Chestnut Street that it was awe-inspiring.
Once or twice she mentioned Owen. And the fact that his father was a well-known lawyer. Aunt Elizabeth came in, as if on radar, to know more, but Vanessa was prepared.
“You don’t tell me about your private life, you never say who loved you and you loved in return. I thought it was a bit … I don’t know … undignified … to talk about things like that.”
“You’re learning fast, Vanessa,” said Elizabeth with a slightly anxious look at her nearly-sixteen-year-old niece.
Three months after her aunt returned to New York Vanessa Byrne discovered that she was pregnant.
She met Owen in a really smart tapas bar and told him. He had just been saying that she had the most amazing taste in finding places when she gave him the news.
“Hey, Vanessa … this is not for real,” he said.
She waited politely for him to say something else. Something like that it was all a bit earlier than they had hoped, but what the hell, they were always going to be together anyway. Owen did not say this. He said, “Jesus, Vanessa, I’m so sorry,” and suddenly she understood that years and years ago something like this must have happened to her aunt too.
She smiled a cold little smile and said yes, wasn’t life really shitty, and got up and left the restaurant.
She lay in her cool, uncluttered bedroom and by the dawn she knew she would go to New York. She worked out the finances. If she sold her record player, her new shoes, her good bracelet, she would have the fare. She had a passport since her sixteenth birthday. Just in case Owen had been going to invite her skiing.
She would turn up at Aunt Elizabeth’s and ask her what to do.
Her mother said that she just gave up.
In the middle of the school term Nessa was going to fly to New York. The rest of the family wasn’t able to go to the Isle of frigging Man but Nessa was going to New York. Her father said it was history repeating itself. Just like Lizzie, gone in two minutes, then they never saw her, apart from her arriving back every year like some bloody duchess. Eamonn and Sean sat, dumbfounded. Imagine that Aunt Elizabeth had sent for Nessa.
Vanessa decided not to tell her aunt until she got there. She didn’t have the work address so she went straight to the address miles out in Queens. She kept checking her address book. This was such a rough area, such a poor building, almost like a slum. Aunt Elizabeth couldn’t live here, surely?
Vanessa sat on the steps outside, waiting for her aunt to return. Eventually she did, at 8 p.m. It was 1 a.m. in Dublin. Everyone in Chestnut Street was asleep. She saw Aunt Elizabeth walking up from the corner. She walked straight and tall, yet looked tired. Her face changed when she saw Vanessa sitting on the steps. She did not look greatly pleased.
“What happened?” she asked.
“I needed some advice.”
“You could have written.” Her aunt’s voice was cold.
“It was too important to wait.”
“Where are you staying?”
“I thought with you, like you stay with us when you come to Dublin.” Vanessa hoped that some spirit shone through her voice. She was deathly tired and frightened but she didn’t want it known.
She followed her aunt’s trim figure up four flights of stairs and down a long corridor. Children were crying behind doors, and cooking smells filled the building.
The big room was shabby, with peeling walls. An ironing board stood at the ready and a steel clothes rail held all the garments that would be worn to work. Two faded armchairs and a single bed in the corner looked as if nobody had ever visited them. A tiny two-ring burner and a sink formed the kitchen. Not a place where gracious meals were made and served.
Vanessa said nothing, just sat there waiting for her aunt to make coffee.
“I suppose you’re pregnant,” Elizabeth said.
“Yes.”
“And he doesn’t want to hear about it?”
“How do you know?” Vanessa was astounded.
“You wouldn’t be here otherwise.”
“You always know what to do, Elizabe
th.” Vanessa realized that she had dropped the “Aunt” bit. It didn’t seem appropriate somehow now that she had discovered the strange secret life that had been lied about for so long. She remembered so many things that had been said: All that matters is to have fresh flowers, all that matters is to have one piece of really good furniture polished with beeswax. Vanessa looked around her; compared to this place Chestnut Street was like a palace. And to think that poor Ma had been scrubbing and cleaning to make things look right.
“Does anyone else know about this, Vanessa?”
“No, only Owen and, as you say, he doesn’t want to hear about it.”
“All that matters is that it stays that way. It’s quite easy if you realize that. Now, are you having a termination or will you have it adopted?”
It was all so businesslike, so authoritative, so like the old Aunt Elizabeth, that Vanessa almost forgot the strange, unexpected surroundings.
“I haven’t decided yet,” she said.
“Well, you must decide soon. And then we have a lot of things to consider. If it’s a termination he and his people should pay. You have no money, I have no money. If not a termination then we have to think of a cover story and a job for you. Just remember that whatever happens, you can’t be allowed to ruin your life staying at home wheeling a pram up and down Chestnut Street, marking yourself out as a loser before your life has properly begun.”
It was all so clear and obvious to Elizabeth, yet it didn’t seem quite so clear to Vanessa.
“It might be easier to be there rather than anywhere else,” she began tentatively.
“Easier than what?”
“Than asking Owen and his family to give me money, than making up some fake existence over here in America.” Vanessa looked around her.
“You don’t like my home, apparently, so why did you come here, then?”
“I didn’t say that—it’s just very different from what you made us think.”
“I’m not responsible for what you thought.”
“Do you really have a big job as a paralegal? Was any of it true? Anything you told us about your life?”
“I work in Manhattan for a legal firm, I meet a lot of cultured people there, I go to lectures and art galleries with them. I spend what I earn in giving a good impression, a good account of myself. Now is there any other intrusive question you would like to ask, you who have turned up pregnant on my doorstep looking for help?”
“Just one more. Were you ever in the same situation as I’m in now?”
There was a long pause. Vanessa wondered whether she would answer at all.
Eventually she said, “Yes I was. Thirty-one years ago. He will be thirty-one at Christmas. Imagine!” She spoke in wonder.
“And where is he?” Vanessa whispered.
“On the West Coast, Seattle, I believe. Of course he may have moved. He tried to find me when he was twenty but I didn’t let him. I wrote and said that all that mattered now was that he forged ahead with his own life; his adoptive parents were substantial people, he had a good education. I never heard from him again.”
Outside the windows of this lonely, shabby walkup apartment the sounds of traffic and police sirens wailed.
Suddenly it was all very clear to Vanessa that all that mattered was that she get out of this place, far away from this lonely, obsessive woman.
She had to come all this distance to realize that her mother’s tired face would eventually light up at the thought of a baby in the home again, and that her father was always great at rocking a pram while he watched the horses line up at the Curragh. Eamonn and Sean would get used to it like everyone got used to everything, except possibly being abandoned thirty-one years ago to substantial people in Seattle.
Vanessa knew she would be called Nessa again and that she would always thank her sad loser of an aunt for showing her the way.
Joyce hated Greek food; it all looked like goat’s balls to her and the wine people drank with it seemed to taste like paint remover. She didn’t know why she had agreed to go out with Leonard and Sally, who were sickeningly in love with each other, and nauseatingly enthusiastic about everything, particularly goat’s balls and paint remover. It was just one of those times when you couldn’t say no. Sally had said, “What night will you come with us to this new place we’ve found? Name any night, and we’ll all go and have a great evening.”
When somebody asks you to name any night, it’s like a declaration of war not to go. And of course there would be the blind date too. Norman, this guy was called. Norman, who had just come to live on Chestnut Street, round the corner from where Leonard and Sally were always so unreasonably happy and sunny.
The blind dates were never actually described as that. They were never presented as a series of men, one after the other, who might conceivably shack up with Joyce and take her out of herself. Joyce didn’t want to be taken out of herself if it meant that she was going to live with some grinning, cheerful man in an utterly tasteless block of utilitarian flats, braying with excitement over some new ethnic food every week.
Joyce wanted to live by herself in her tiny town house with its beautiful furniture and lovely ornaments, and be visited regularly by Charles, who designed the most exquisite clothes in the world. She was a fashion model, and she was like another beautiful ornament in the little house that Charles had given her. She dressed as carefully for his visits as she did for the fashion shows where she wore the clothes he designed. She walked as elegantly to pour him a Campari and soda as she did down the ramps at the big collections. It was cool and understated, and peaceful. Nobody ever threw plates on the ground and shouted and swore eternal love in public to each other in that background. So, it was a bit lonely sometimes, but self-pity was for losers, and Joyce was definitely not a loser.
She dressed for the Greek evening with her usual precision, laying out on the bed a cream dress, but replacing it with a darker one because she remembered how waiters can spill things over you in darkly lit places. Her best handbag, no. Her new shoes, no. Her beautiful locket, yes. Not much could happen to a locket even with Leonard and Sally.
Sighing and hoping that the evening might at any rate yield some horror story that would amuse Charles, she went out the door. Taxis always seemed to appear for Joyce. She got resignedly into the back, discouraged conversation from the driver, who thought she was a pretty bird and asked her was she going out for a night on the town.
“I think I gave you the name of the restaurant,” Joyce said coldly.
“Snooty bitch,” thought the taxi driver, and the journey took place in silence.
Time and time again she had told herself it was a false kindness to go out with Leonard and Sally. She and Sally had done a secretarial course together years ago, but their lives were so different now. Joyce had money and fame and style, Sally had Leonard and the most awful flat in the world. It’s just that they were like friendly puppies—you couldn’t kick them. And in a way maybe they got pleasure and even status from all this presenting of ghastly men for her. Maybe they got a kick from saying that they could get their friends a date with a famous model. Perhaps they just liked her along to show that they could rise out of their dreadful life. But that was a bit mean, Joyce told herself; no—that was unfair. Leonard and Sally were so kind, they probably just liked her for herself. You met so many bitchy and cynical people in the fashion business it was hard to realize that not everyone had an angle.
Sally and Leonard were at the table, a bottle of the evil-smelling wine already opened. No sign of the man. Perhaps he couldn’t come. Joyce told them some tales of the latest collections, and Leonard and Sally giggled like conspirators, delighted to be let in on the secrets of the rich and the famous.
“Where’s Norman, then?” she asked eventually. For once both Leonard and Sally looked a bit embarrassed.
“He’ll be a bit late—he’s been tied up,” said Sally.
“He won’t come—he’s got a cold,” said Leonard.
Everyon
e laughed, since it was so obvious that stories hadn’t been synchronized.
“Oh, all right,” said Sally. “Joyce is an old friend—I’ll tell her. We went to his flat to collect him, and when Leonard mentioned that you were going to be with us, Norman became all stupid.”
“He said models weren’t his scene,” said Leonard.
“He said he wouldn’t know what to say to a beautiful, leggy clotheshorse,” said Sally.
“He said that models only talked about themselves,” said Leonard. “I told him you were our friend, but he got a bit bolshie, so I said to him that it was his loss, and told him to stuff it.”
“And I said to him that he was stupid to make generalizations, so he said he might come,” said Sally. “But I think we’ll just go ahead and order, and not pander to him.”
“And what does this Norman do for a living that he has such strong views on everything?” asked Joyce rather testily.
“He’s an actor. He’s very good, actually—we’ve seen him in quite a few things,” Sally said, her loyalty overriding her pique about Norman’s nonappearance.
“Well, actors are pretty good at talking about themselves, I would have thought,” said Joyce cheerfully, and the subject was dropped for a deep discussion about goat’s or sheep’s balls in sauce.
A huge shadow fell over the table and the fattest man that Joyce had ever seen towered there.
“Am I too late to join you?” he asked, slightly sheepishly. There was a lot of banter, and shouting, and Sally saying that they thought he was so bad-mannered perhaps he should be sent to another table as a punishment, and Leonard saying that Joyce was so broadminded she was going to allow him to sit down. Norman took her hand in his, which was about four times the size of her own.
“I’m sure it will be very nice to know you,” he said reassuringly, and then all was babble again about more wine, and whether one large salad with chopped cheese in it would be enough for the four of them or if they should have two.
Joyce wasn’t all hard; she could be very kind to old ladies who wanted to cross the road, and she was sentimental about animals or crying children. Immediately she decided that this poor guy had put on a big front about model girls being empty-headed because he was so gross and enormous, he felt that a model girl wouldn’t even talk to him. Totally forgiving of his rude remarks as had been reported to her, Joyce decided she would be charming to him and make him feel at ease.