Smile

  —God – the state of me. I must’ve fallen asleep. Put the kettle on for us.

  One day, I came in and I didn’t go up to her. I went into the kitchen and ate a packet of biscuits. My sister was staying at my auntie’s house. I hadn’t seen her in weeks. I filled the kettle. I put my homework out on the table. I heard her on the stairs. I put the gas on under the kettle. I was holding my pen when she came in. I looked. It was my mother, not the other woman. Whatever I’d done – been a man – it had worked.

  Rachel never told me why she’d cried. She stood behind me. I don’t know if she read what I’d written. I don’t remember what I wrote. There must have been a moment – a breakthrough, sometime after that night with Rachel – when I knew and accepted that I wasn’t writing the book. It must have been quite like the moment when I knew that I was going to write it. I don’t know.

  Radio was fine. I went in there armed with other people’s ideas. When I wrote, I had something of my own to write about. I was never lazy. Just inadequate. But I remember thinking – feeling – that by fucking Rachel I’d be up to anything. I’d be incisive, winning, brilliant. I believed in myself. And we were a match. I gave her something. I saw that the night she sat on the bed crying. I’m not sure what she saw. Some sort of solidity. Reliability. I was solid, or she’d decided that I was.

  And we filled a gap. We were an outrageous couple. That claim seems daft today but that was what we were. We might have been Ireland’s first celebrity couple. We were wild but together. A happily married couple who weren’t actually married. (We never did get married. I started referring to Rachel as my wife after ten years or so. I couldn’t say ‘girlfriend’ any more and ‘partner’, in our case, would have been confusing. Rachel, by then, had half a dozen partners.) We were unpredictable but she cooked and I wrote; she was in the kitchen and I was somewhere else in the building. Writing. Working on something. He’s cooking up something too, is he? We were the celebrity couple but we were becoming well known for what we did alone. We were neck and neck, celebrity chef and your man on the radio. We made sense.

  * * *

  I remember waking, often, soon after my father died, and being unable to breathe. There was a rock, a boulder, on my chest. But I was awake and I’d sit back against the bedroom wall and the weight would be gone and my breathing went back to normal. Years later, when I heard my son breathe, when he was small and was having an asthma attack, I recognised the sound, the rhythm – the lack. Like he was pulling breath from a hole. I’d done the same. Until that stopped and I could lie down again. I don’t remember being frightened. I was shocked that I was awake, the first time and maybe the second time. Somehow, I knew I should lean back against the wall. And leave my mother alone.

  The loft was different. Because I didn’t wake up. I was awake. Rachel was asleep beside me. I’d taken her book off the side of her face. She was reading The Running Man. I’d kissed her hair, lowered the book to the floor. It was a hot night – August the 27th. We’d left two windows at the far end of the room open but the problem was the noise. We were living in Temple Bar. It was years before the madness but it was still Temple Bar. So the windows where we slept were shut. We’d only a sheet over us. Rachel had already kicked her share of it off. She was lying on her stomach. I was wide awake and didn’t want to be. I didn’t want to turn on the light, to read. I thought about writing something. I’d slip back into bed just when she was waking. She’d see the pages. I’d lay them on my chest, to make it look as if I’d dropped off, exhausted. It was what I wanted, honest exhaustion. Like hers. I pulled the sheet off me, shoved it to the end of the bed. I was turning – the pillow was too far back. My head – the side of my face – was down, a drop I hadn’t expected because there was no pillow. It could only have been an inch but it felt like I was falling.

  I think I hurt her. I must have. I exploded. I’ve nothing to describe it. No picture or sound. I burst apart. I stopped existing. But I knew exactly what had happened. When I was back again. When I knew she was beside me, holding on to me. And I didn’t mind her hearing me cry.

  —What happened?

  I had no idea of time. How long there had been between lowering my head and hearing the fear in Rachel’s voice.

  —Victor?

  I had to cry. It was the only way to drive it out of me. I could still feel the carpet. I could smell it. I could feel his hands. Pushing me down. Shoving my face.

  He wasn’t there. I was with Rachel. He wasn’t there but he had been there and I had been there. I hadn’t dreamt it – I’d been there. She leaned over me, across me; I could feel her nervousness. I could feel her shaking – I could see it – as she leaned across and turned on the light beside the bed.

  —Okay? Victor – okay?

  She tried to see my face.

  —Okay?

  I was still crying. I could feel the carpet, on the cheek that now lay against the sheet. I couldn’t stop crying. I was pulling sludge – from somewhere under my lungs.

  —It was a nightmare, she said.

  I nodded, but then said No.

  —No? she said.

  I nodded again.

  —What then?

  She waited. She rubbed my back. She lay back down until she felt and saw me move. I lifted myself up, and back against the pillow. She helped – she straightened it behind my back. I wiped my eyes, my face.

  —Sorry.

  I let myself breathe; I let myself get it back to normal. I closed my eyes. I began to feel cold. It was a hot night but I was very cold. She lifted herself, and sat beside me. I told her. I told her what had happened to me. When I was fourteen, and just now. I didn’t separate or join them. I just told her what had happened. A Christian Brother had pinned me to the floor and put his hands on my penis and testicles. The Head Brother, the principal of the school, had done that.

  —Oh, Jesus.

  —Yeah.

  I wiped my face again and described the room, the floor, why I was there after school. How I’d ended up alone in the room with him.

  —It wasn’t my fault, I told her.

  —What?

  —It wasn’t my fault, I said again.

  —How can you say that?

  —I wasn’t the only one, I told her.—He taught us all how to wrestle.

  —All of you?

  —Some, I said.—A good few.

  I told her more about the school. I told her about the Brother who’d fancied me in first year and about learning the Ó’Riada mass for the Brother who was dying. I told her about the stairs and the mad routes to the classrooms and the Virgin Mary with the hole in her back. I led her away from the Head Brother and me.

  —It sounds dreadful, she said, but I knew I’d reassured her – and distracted her. I’d made a story of it.

  In a few years, after we’d moved out of the loft, I started to meet men who’d ask me about school. We’d be sitting at the table in our house or at someone else’s table, a friend or colleague of Rachel’s.

  —Which school did you go to, Victor?

  Which? The possibilities were limited. There were only five or six schools I could have gone to, if I was one of them. The women always knew before the men: I wasn’t one of them – they knew I was interesting. I’d come from another world, across the city.

  —Nowhere you’ve heard of, I’d answer.

  —Where?

  —The Christian Brothers.

  —Oh.

  I didn’t have to give the school a name or location. I might as well have told them I’d gone to school up the Limpopo. I’d start to talk. I’d tell them all about it. If we were at a table, all other chat would stop and they’d listen, appalled, delighted, spellbound.

  —You should write about it.

  —I am.

  I’d start with the room, and being told to stay behind after the last bell. I’d tell them
about the Head Brother.

  —The fucking school principal?

  —I’m not making this up.

  —Sorry.

  He asked me about my father; he knew my father was back in hospital. He asked how he was, how my mother was coping, if I was a support to her. I’m sure you are. We were all in his prayers, he told me, his and all the Brothers’. He knew I was going through a difficult time. He knew that, without my father at home, I was the man of the house and he was going to teach me how to defend myself. The rudiments, he said. The men at the table saw where I was going; the women were slower. I’d describe how it had been just that, at first. A lesson in wrestling moves, dealing with an attack. Strange but, in the world of the Christian Brothers, not all that strange. Then I told them that he put me on the floor and he was on top of me and his hand was on my crotch. Staying there. I couldn’t get up. I didn’t have permission to get up. It was the Head Brother, the principal of the school, who was holding me down.

  —You just let him do it?

  —Conor – !

  There was nearly always one who wanted to blame me. I learnt to enjoy it.

  —I was fourteen.

  —Well – how small were you?

  —Conor – for God’s sake –

  I stood up. I’m not a very big man.

  —Smaller than I am now, I said.

  I sat down again.

  —I’d have fucking killed him, said Conor.—I’m sorry. I just know that if he’d —

  He looked around at the other men.

  —Did anything like that ever happen to any of us? he asked.

  Us.

  Most of them shook their heads. The others were worried that a shake of the head would propel me out of the room; they’d be denying the truth of what I’d just told them. They were nice people. Most of the women shook their heads too, often more vigorously than their husbands and boyfriends.

  —The nuns were lovely.

  I’d look across the table at Rachel. She’d smile. She knew. She’d seen me. She’d seen the truth. And she knew I was going to keep talking. She knew I was going to rescue them. Sometimes a question would get me moving again.

  —Did it happen often?

  —No, I’d say.—Only once. And look, it wasn’t all bad.

  And I’d tell them about the Brother sitting through his own funeral mass, and the Blessed Virgin and the art teacher with the paint-covered dog that barked when his master was battering a boy whose still life wasn’t good enough, and the snot on the tip of the history teacher’s nose, and the Brother who listened to Radio Luxembourg every night so he could tell us about God in the songs we’d been listening to the night before.

  —So, it was just violence, really – the odd belt?

  It would be Conor, or a version of Conor. Rachel worked with a lot of women who went out with the Conors; Rachel could have had her pick of the Conors. This one – the first one – was a rugby international. He was capped twice, I think. Before the knee. Every-one knew about the knee. He married a girl Rachel had gone to school with, who’d worked with her – for her – in the early Meals on Heels days. They’d actually met while she was working. It became a story people loved. They were interviewed together. He put his hand on my bum, she laughed. More phone calls to Rachel from mothers looking for part-time work for their daughters.

  Only once, I told them. It had happened only once. That was true.

  But it came back more than once, after that first time. Whatever it was. The Drop. That was what I named it.

  —The Drop? Rachel would ask.

  Always at night. Always lying down. Only in the loft. Only in those two years. She liked the name. It did the trick, caged it, made it comical. I don’t know what I sounded like when it happened; I don’t know how much of the place I invaded, if I jolted or kicked out. There was never blood or bruising. I never bit my tongue or hit out – I don’t think I hit out. I never forgot that it had happened. I never quite lost the crawling feel across my skin, the feeling that I was going to be punched, kicked low. But its recurrence was always a shock. Weeks later – months later. I was on the floor in his office, the weight, the gasping. Try to move now, Victor, try to move. What are you made of? I didn’t see the room. A patch of floor was all I got. The huge hand flattening me. Covering me completely. Try to move – go on. And I was looking at Rachel. She was standing beside the bed. I saw her see me. She sat on the bed as I sat back.

  —It happened again, she said.

  —Yeah.

  —The same?

  —I don’t know.

  And life went on.

  Why the loft? Why only there, and only then? Now – today – I think it was because I was happy. I didn’t think that then. I couldn’t have. I didn’t know I was happy and I didn’t know that happiness was finite.

  * * *

  I admit: I revealed it because I had nothing else to talk about. That was what I thought – I knew – at the time. I was going up the steps into the RTE radio centre, ready to nod at anyone coming out. It was raining and I hadn’t a clue what I was doing there. I’d flicked through the papers in a newsagent’s but nothing had stuck. Walking out of the shop, I’d already forgotten the headlines.

  It had been a while since I’d received the call. Neither myself nor Rachel had mentioned it; I was working on the book. I was knuckling down. Nearly there. Year One, Year Two, Year Three. The phone had rung in the kitchen the night before. We’d both been there – a rare enough event, because Rachel was flying. Rachel was becoming Rachel. Rachel had become Rachel. I picked it up and listened to the producer. She was honest: the dancer who’d defected from the Soviet Union had cancelled his trip to Dublin, so would I come out for a quarter of an hour in the morning? I pretended to flick through my diary and told her I’d do it. I put the phone down and told Rachel.

  —Great, she said.

  She smiled and kept chopping the onions. And I got back to watching Fireman Sam with our son. And there I was the next morning, on the way down the stairs to the studios.

  —Been to any gigs? the researcher asked.

  —Not recently, I said.

  —Any of the biggies grab you?

  She meant the stories of the day. I still believed I’d be able to think of something. It was what I’d been believing for years. The pages would be filled and they’d be great. Rachel believed that too. She still looked at me, and held me, like I was the man she needed. She still referred to the spare room as my office, and she could do it without the hesitation and grin – the little quotation marks – that came later, before she stopped referring to it at all. I believed I’d come up with something that would fill the allotted time, that would get me invited back, that would allow myself and Rachel to grin whenever the phone rang just as we were putting the forks to our mouths or the plastic spoon to our son’s.

  The researchers had been my age once, or older. Now they were younger. This one was brand new.

  —What I want to do, I told her,—is talk about something that happened to me when I was in school.

  —Cool. What?

  I told her.

  —Wait there, she said.

  I stood outside the studio door. I walked a few paces, came back, walked again, came back. I hadn’t planned this. I was only now hearing what I’d said. If I had to wait I’d go, back up the stairs, out, home.

  The studio door opened.

  —Come in.

  I went in, and looked through the studio glass. The producer was at Myles Bradley’s ear. Literally at his ear. He was nodding. He didn’t turn to look at her or through the glass, at me. No one said hello. Paper and control panels had never been studied so carefully. I could hear the ads. I always knew when they were coming to an end. I knew exactly when the producer would lift her head from the side of Myles’s and come and get me – or stop me. I made sure I didn?
??t pant, although I wanted to. I needed to. I needed air. I needed water. I needed to run. I needed her to see me, so I could shake my head and let her know that I’d changed my mind, that I hadn’t really made the decision in the first place. She put her hand on the desk in front of her, and stood straight, and moved to the door. She was limping, or one of her legs was stiff. The door opened out.

  —Did you hurt your leg? I asked her.

  —Fell off my bike, she said.—Go on ahead. He’s ready.

  —Fine, I said.

  —No names, she said.

  I understood.

  —Okay.

  I passed her.

  —Thank you, she said.

  That got me the seven steps to the chair opposite Myles. He looked embarrassed, excited, scared. He glanced at me. He nodded, looked at the glass, listened, nodded again.

  —Welcome back, he said.

  He looked at me properly.

  —Victor, he said.—Victor Forde. It’s been a while. How are you?

  —Well, thanks, I said.

  —Am I right in thinking that the last time we spoke, it was about the schools?

  —Probably, I said.

  —Something about senior students and contraception, if I remember right.

  —That sounds right, I said.

  —You got the phones hopping – as usual.

  —Sorry about that.

  —Ah, now, said Myles.—That’s a while back. But I remember thinking –