Three Wise Men, page 35
She may need to go shopping. Jack used to say Eimear’s policy was ‘I spend, therefore I am’ – that was back in the days when he paid half the credit-card bill. She doesn’t do too much shopping at the moment – she has assorted builders to keep in luxury. Still, there’s nothing to beat the narcotic high of a new purchase, especially if you retain the receipt and return it the next day. The adrenaline hit without the credit-card strike.
Shopping takes her mind off men. The only fellows you see in shops work there. Even Christy, who shadows her, quakes at the idea of an afternoon in Grafton Street. Eimear remembers how she and Gloria had some satisfying shopping sessions, but Kate only shopped when she wanted something specifically – never on the off-chance. Eimear smiles and then stiffens; she doesn’t need them, they were false friends.
‘Why couldn’t they have gone somewhere you’ll find men by the yard if they were looking for action, why did they have to target mine?’ she grumbles. ‘They could have tried the pub or the snooker hall or the betting shop.’
Maybe not the betting shop, she can’t see either of them saying: ‘I’ll just nip into Odds On and lay a couple of trebles, you never know what talent might be losing their shirts on the same race.’ And snooker halls are probably too dimly lit to have a proper look at the fellows cueing up. Eimear supposes pubs aren’t all that promising either … there’s always a million to one chance some hunk will approach and ask if he can buy you a drink but the reality is being pestered by drunks wanting change for the cigarette machine.
Nuala Ryan is looking for a man: she told Eimear supermarkets in England have singles only nights and it’s high time her Spar in Harold’s Cross introduced the same idea.
‘But, Nuala,’ said Eimear, ‘you don’t need to pitch up between 8 p.m. and 9 p.m. on Unattached Wednesdays to spot the singles – five bottles of wine and one small pizza in a basket is as obvious as a kiss-me-quick hat.’
The more she talks to Nuala, the more Eimear realises she ought to hold on to Christy. According to Nuala, it’s difficult enough to meet someone when you’re in your twenties but terminal weariness has set in by the time you hit thirty.
Nuala has taken to scrutinising those initial-ridden ads in the personal columns of newspapers and regaling Eimear with details of the TDH males with GSOH applying to meet ‘earthy’ or ‘fun-loving’ or ‘tactile’ females – all euphemisms for nymphomaniacs, so far as Eimear can judge. Not that any of those adjectives apply to Nuala Ryan – she wears Aran cardigans. Baggy ones. Are there enough sex addicts out there to meet the demand from the male population? There’s Kate and Gloria for starters, although Gloria’s currently out of commission in the advanced stages of pregnancy. She must be due soon, Eimear realises with a pang.
Eimear has been studying the personals with Nuala – the library is awash with newspapers and every one is cluttered with column after column of men advertising themselves. They’ve been trying to estimate how many are truly single. “The ads are all ageist, with fellows of forty-five saying they want women aged between eighteen and thirty-five.
‘Is it a crime to date women their own age?’ asked Nuala indignantly during their lunch-break.
‘Apparently,’ shrugged Eimear. ‘It leads to loss of face, loss of sex drive and loss of ego.’
There’s something else they’ve noticed about the personals. When men advertise their wares they choose the oddest attributes for their come-and-get-me-girls pitch: they say they’re ‘solvent’ or ‘non-smoking’ (another excuse for initials, NS) or even ‘spiritual’ – this from a man who wants to meet an ‘Asian babe’. All the men are handsome, genuine, affectionate and cultured. Who’s admitting to alcoholism or a violent temper or parsimony?
Some try to be provocative to stand out from the herd – they’ll ask for women with PhDs only … but she still has to look like a Baywatch lifeguard. Then there are men who imagine a string of puns will provoke response. Eimear memorised one classic example: ‘Stake Me Out. Transylvanian male, 40s, seeks attractive acolyte 20–35, to open the lid on his social life.’
She felt like writing to him to say, ‘Stay in your box, perv.’
But then the ads from women aren’t much better:
‘One Jaguar, one Mercedes, sought by two beautiful women, 24, to be driven wild in the city.’
When she reads the personals, Christy doesn’t seem so bad – at least he’s normal. And when Eimear compares him with Jack, he’s a saint. One with some oddities, admittedly, but then you don’t have to be a saint to become a saint. Look at Saint Kevin, who sat up a tree and threw missiles at women because he thought they were the source of iniquity.
‘Who am I trying to kid? Christy’s a pain,’ sighs Eimear. ‘Perhaps I’d be better off with one of Kate’s Beautiful Boys. He might not know his way around an electrical circuit but at least he wouldn’t supervise my washing-up operations. Or be trying to drag me off to Ikea.’
Your gut reaction is all you have to go on in relationships. Right from the start she sensed that Jack was a Don Juan but she disregarded it, convinced she’d be woman enough for him. Which she was, for all of ten minutes. Then there’s Christy. Her instinct tells her he isn’t the love of her life but she’s too cowardly to risk being alone.
‘I knew he wasn’t right for me as soon as we had carnival knowledge of each other and it turned out to be no funfair,’ she tells Nuala after work, when they try out the Happy Hour drinks in the new pub on the comer. Nuala sticks to Coke, while Eimear swallows Moscow Mules in rapid succession, which is why she’s talking about her sex life to an avid (but disapproving) Nuala Ryan.
‘But here I am still seeing him,’ Eimear continues ‘allowing him to describe me as his girlfriend, failing to object when he leaves a change of clothes at the cottage. At least with Jack it was love. “I wasn’t in full command of my senses, your honour.”’
She even tells Nuala about Gloria’s pregnancy and the identity of the father.
‘That’s what hurts most.’ Her voice is dismal, the Moscow Mule lashes out inside her. ‘I wanted a baby so badly and I couldn’t manage it. My useless body that Christy desires and Jack before him and God knows how many others before them.’
Sandy-haired Nuala pulls her paisley-patterned skirt primly down over her calves, at once envious and censorious of the effect this glamorous new friend has on men.
‘In another week or so Gloria will be cuddling the baby I should have had,’ says Eimear. ‘I don’t understand why Jack went through with it, unless he wanted to punish me. It’s not as if he has the least interest in children – he’s an only child, self-centred. He flipped when he realised I was trying to get pregnant and that’s the real reason the marriage ended.
‘He stormed out of the house and moved into rooms at the college, it was nothing to do with me finding out about him and Kate. He accused me of cheating on him by trying to have a baby without his prior consent – he saw a child as a rival and couldn’t bear the idea of sharing his woman with a child. I think it’s because he never had to share his mother with anyone, not even a father. He died when Jack was five.’
‘I have to catch the 7.23 p.m. bus, Eimear.’ Nuala attempts to climb decorously from the bar stool and fails miserably. Eimear ignores her.
‘Christy’s everything that Jack’s not and it’s driving me crazy,’ she wails. ‘You’d think I’d cherish a man who idolises me as ostentatiously as Christy, who lavishes me with compliments and is forever telling me he loves me. I have to break free of him, Nuala; the irony is, I could have done it with Kate and Gloria’s support. I think about them all the time. I speculate on whether Kate found herself a Beautiful Boy. I wonder if Gloria’s having a boy or a girl.’
As Nuala slides out, staggering only slightly under the onslaught of her colleague’s drink-fuelled despondency, Eimear wonders if she’ll ever find friends to replace Kate and Gloria. Nuala Ryan’s a poor substitute, with her long face and longer skirts. But there’s no point in having friends she can’t trust.
CHAPTER 42
Eimear is physically restraining herself from ringing Kate. The local free-sheet is lying on the mat alongside her letters and, between bites of toast, she finds an article she knows would have Kate rolling about the floor. She cuts it out for her automatically, it’s exactly the sort of nonsense Kate would frame and hang in her loo.
It’s from Albert Einstein to his wife on their tenth wedding anniversary – a list of requirements. He tells her she has to ensure his clothes and linen are kept in order, that he’s served three regular meals a day and that his bedroom and study are tidied but no one touches his desk. Eimear doesn’t know whether to laugh or cry as she reads on:
‘You will renounce all personal relations with me except when these are required to keep up social appearances. In particular you will not request:
That I sit with you at home
That I go out with you or travel with you
You will promise especially that:
You will expect no affection from me and you will not reproach me for this
You must answer me at once when I speak to you
You must leave my bedroom or study at once without protesting when I ask you to go
You will promise not to denigrate me in front of the children either by word or deed. ‘
Talk about a control freak; and this is the man whose face appears on T-shirts. Christy doesn’t seem so bad with his washing-up fetish and his habit of prowling the house with a bottle of bleach in his hand.
She realised something shocking recently, something even Moscow Mules wouldn’t help her confess to Nuala Ryan because she’s so ashamed: she’d like Jack dead. She doesn’t want to kill him but she prefers not to think of him breathing and laughing and loving either. Eimear was hunting on the shelves for a copy of Pride and Prejudice for a fourteen-year-old with an essay to write when she drifted off, fantasising about identifying Jack’s body after a road accident. He hadn’t a mark on him and death was instantaneous so it’s not as though she imagined him suffering the torment of the damned, but there he was all the same, still as the grave. It was a particularly satisfying daydream.
Naturally she was mortified when she resurfaced and realised she had an impatient teenager and a nasty flaw in her personality to contend with. Eimear knows it’s nothing to be proud of, picturing someone lifeless just because he doesn’t love her any more. She supposes it means she’s not over him, perhaps she’ll never be over him.
The newspaper story didn’t work out quite as she’d planned – Jack ended up making money from it and she was pestered by the journalist who lost his job. He seemed to think she could go to his editor and straighten it out.
‘Fat chance,’ snorted Eimear. ‘Maybe next time he’ll think twice before sabotaging someone’s name on the strength of another’s say-so. It’s power with responsibility, my friend, not power with an expense account.’
Anyway she heard he landed on his feet with another job on one of the English tabloids trying to make inroads into the Irish market. So she has nothing to berate herself about.
‘Eimear Mulligan, I’d recognise you anywhere.’
Miss McGinn takes Eimear’s hand in both hers and gazes fondly at her; Eimear finds it most disconcerting. She hasn’t changed either, she’s still encased in a fusty suit. It’s not the same one she wore when she was teaching them but an identical twin.
‘I suppose we should be calling you Eimear O’Brien but old habits die hard,’ adds Miss McGinn.
Eimear nods with as much grace as she can muster. She never felt like a Mulligan.
‘Now the girls are all waiting for you, they’re dizzy with excitement at having a published poet come to speak to them,’ says Miss McGinn. ‘But first I must bring you to the staff-room. You’ll see a few familiar faces there.’
‘I’m looking forward to meeting my old teachers, Miss McGinn,’ Eimear tells her.
She throws up her hands in horror. ‘Call me Maura,’ she insists. ‘Miss McGinn sounds far too elderly.’
The sense of smell is a fast-track to the past – one whiff of the school’s characteristic odour of floor polish and gym shoes and Eimear’s a first former again, wearing a blazer one size too large and puzzling over how to find the science lab. She’d never have managed without Kate, her older sisters coached her in the layout. It’s all exactly as Eimear remembers, except scaled down to half-size.
The staff-room is smaller than she expects too, acrid with the scent of cigarette smoke – and she’s a smoker – and littered with coffee cups. Sister Xavier is waiting with a reception committee but she’s the only one Eimear recognises. In fact she hardly recognises the nun at all because she’s not wearing her black robes; she’s traded them in for a navy suit with a silk blouse underneath and her hair is visible because she’s discarded her veil. Stylishly cut hair, Eimear notices with some surprise.
She stutters over Sister Xavier’s name, to her evident delight. She touches her salt-and-pepper bouffant self-consciously as she extends a hand to Eimear and explains that she’s reverted to her own Christian name. Sister Anne.
‘You’re welcome back to the school, Eimear. Well well, it’s always a pleasure to receive our old girls. Whatever happened to those two friends of yours, Gloria and ah, Kate? Are they still in Dublin with you? My goodness the three of you were inseparable, we used to call you the triplets.’
‘Yes, they’re in Dublin but I don’t see so much of them these days,’ Eimear replies. ‘You know how it is, you grow apart. Gloria has a little job in a school and Kate helps out in a solicitor’s office.’
‘Does she indeed? I thought she’d trained for the law but maybe the course was too long. Well well, she had a fine brain. And what about yourself, a poet now. Are you working on anything at the moment?’
‘Inspiration is creeping up on me every day,’ Eimear assures her. ‘Snatches of conversation overheard in bus stop queues, odd lines from a pop song, you never know where ideas will strike.’
‘Is that so – maybe we’ll end up inspiring you here,’ smiles Sister Anne. ‘Well well, mustn’t keep the sixth-formers waiting – Miss McGinn will bring you back for some refreshments before you leave.’
Eimear grinds her teeth as she follows ‘Maura’ along the corridor. Inspiration is not hitting her every day, nor even every week. In fact she’s writing drivel since she finished her debut collection. Obviously she’s a one-hit wonder, won’t Jack be thrilled.
The girls look older than seventeen or eighteen, despite their brown and yellow uniforms. They exude sophistication and – Eimear realises with a sinking heart that she could be in for a bumpy ride – boredom. So much for thinking this will sell books and winkle her on to the school curriculum. Old Amo-Amas-Amat radiates encouragement from the back of the room, along with another teacher Eimear doesn’t know, their English teacher.
‘I want to keep this informal so I’m going to read a few poems aloud to you and then perhaps we could discuss them, you may have some questions,’ she begins.
Perhaps the hand-painted cream silk dress and scarf were a dodgy idea – she should have opted for the businesslike image after all.
The girls listen politely but the silence is complete when she invites questions. Humiliatingly blank looks are directed at her. Fortunately their teacher, a curvy strawberry blonde wearing what Eimear evaluates and dismisses as a cheap summer dress, poses one.
‘Where does your inspiration come from?’
This is easy, she can slip into her bus stops and pop songs spiel. But she can’t spin the answer out forever and again the stillness is mental torture. ‘Maura’ steps in.
‘Did you always want to be a poet and when did you realise you could write poetry – was it one particular event which galvanised you?’
The answer to that’s an extremely interesting one, thinks Eimear grimly, but she’s not going down that particular cul-de-sac to entertain a crowd of tedious sixth-formers who probably won’t even buy her book anyway. Ex-husbands, affairs with best friends, therapeutic ranting about perfidy and serpent’s teeth on a blank page … nope, let them keep those bored expressions.
‘I always used to scribble odd lines – I kept a notebook and fired down ideas as they occurred to me,’ she chatters. ‘And then one day I knew it was time to turn all those jottings into a collection of poetry.’
A sea of indifferent faces loom up at her. She’s impressing nobody – what is it with teenagers nowadays. There’s nothing for it but to head off for a coffee with Sister-Xavier-reincarnated-as-Anne. Or would she rate a thimbleful of sherry? She could use something alcofrolic.
Wait, a genuine question, be still her beating heart.
‘I notice a blanket resentment of men in your work, why do you portray them all as fiends and ravishers – don’t you think you’re generalising and being somewhat unfair?’
Watery eyes blink innocently up at Eimear from behind gold-rimmed glasses. Little cow.
‘I think you’re misconstruing my intention. It’s not to present men in a negative light but to show women in a positive one. For the purposes of this work I’m not sufficiently interested in men to vilify them, what I’m attempting to do is to demonstrate how women are powerful enough to overcome mistreatment, how they refuse to allow themselves to become victims even if circumstances – or indeed their men – attempt to channel them into such a role.’
‘But there isn’t a single redeemable man in your entire collection. I’ve worked my way through it and found a child molester, two pimps, a bigamist, a Peeping Tom, a phone pest and several sadists. That’s not representative of society,’
Who let this girl in? And who gave her a copy of Mna to read – Eimear wants it confiscated immediately.
‘What’s your name? Karen? Karen, I’m flattered you’ve taken the trouble to study my poetry so conscientiously, you must bring me up your copy after we’re finished here and I’ll sign it for you.
‘Let me explain something about art to you. It’s not a writer’s function to hold up a mirror to society to reflect exactly what goes on – in some instances it’s more productive to exaggerate the flaws you perceive, the better to draw attention to them. Now patently there are decent men in the community and there are deviants and equally patently the perverts are far outnumbered. However there’s such a thing as poetic licence and I make it my responsibility to focus on those warped few in order to fire a warning shot – to eliminate complacency. Does that make sense, Karen?’
