Late on a grey-skied Thursday afternoon Ruth found her in the corner of the deserted library, drawing intricate spiders’ webs on the back of her pad. Maria glanced up guiltily, then made room on her desk for Ruth. “You’ve got to help me with this essay. Discuss how Turner’s works are expressive of the spirit of Romanticism.”
Ruth gagged obediently.
“I mean, I could always rehash what the books say about the lonely artist prancing round on tempests and mountain-tops, but I’d rather say something original.”
“I know exactly.” Ruth took the pen out of Maria’s hand and added a fat fly to a web. “I used to try and find a fresh angle for every essay till my tutor lost his temper and told me there just weren’t any women’s issues in the Franco-Prussian War.”
“So there weren’t.” Jael’s face stuck up over the top of the partition.
Ruth raised her eyebrows at Maria. “Do you think she’d know the Franco-Prussian War if it bit her on her woman’s issue?”
“Ladies, please, we are in a place of lofty learning.” She slid in between them and sneaked a few nibbles at Ruth’s neck.
Maria looked down tactfully and tried to concentrate on her essay plan. So far it went Introduction, Historical Context, Numbers Two to Five, then Conclusion and Bibliography. She heard Ruth hiss, “Get your tongue out of my ear,” then a painful thud.
“Are we disturbing you?” Jael was rubbing her elbow.
“Not at all,” Maria told her. “I’m stuck. Can’t think of anything to write that’s not totally banal.”
“So give the bastards what they want,” Jael said in exasperation. “Let them eat clichés. I just copy mine out of old library books.”
“Yeah, well, you’ve got about as much intellectual integrity as a toilet roll,” said Ruth, straightening her shirt collar.
“But I’m so much more romantic,” she drawled, striking a Marlene Dietrich pose against the partition.
“Well, that’s a fact.”
“Romantic?” Maria looked up from the blank page, yawning. “Our wee Jaely?”
“Ach, you should have known us in the early days,” Ruth told her. “We had quite a courtship. Well, two weeks actually, but she brought me roses and gave me rides on her motorbike till she crashed it.”
Maria leaned back, balancing her chair on two legs. “Red roses?”
“No, sort of dirty-coloured ones.”
“Enough!” Jael slapped the desk with the refill pad. “I paid fifty pence each for those wretched flowers; they were meant to be black, a new species. I was trying to be original.”
“You must admit they were horrible,” said Ruth indulgently.
Jael put the pad over her face and made sounds of despair.
“Go on,” Maria told Ruth, letting her chair drop into place with a bump. “Tell me more romance.”
Ruth’s forehead furrowed with the effort of memory. “She took me on a ski holiday last New Year—did I ever show you the photos?—and she dragged me out of several drifts.”
“Don’t show her the nudie ones,” said Jael in horror, dropping the pad.
“Of course I won’t. Do you think Maria would have any interest in perusing your parts?”
Jael stage-whispered, “I’m keeping them for blackmail when she’s a Labour politician.”
“Anyway, what else was romantic?” Maria tapped her pen against the partition impatiently.
Ruth seemed to be running out of memories. “Well, she sat up late so many nights helping me to revise for last summer’s exams that she failed her own. How’s that?”
“Ten out of ten.” Maria’s eyes went from one to the other.
Jael grinned as she got up and stretched. “If my memory serves me right, it wasn’t revision we were at at all.”
“She doesn’t need the details. Leave the poor girl to her essay.”
They blew handfuls of kisses from the escalator. When they had sunk out of view, Maria put down her pen and let her head slump onto her arms. Ten minutes’ dreamtime before really tackling Turner.
She could see Damien if she craned her neck to the left, but she wasn’t going to. He was nothing worth pining over; he should wash his hair more often, for starters. But as soon as she shut her eyes, she could conjure up a broad-shouldered genii in a cloud of blue smoke, a Damien who smiled like Paul Newman and, lazily tossing back his heavy plait, murmured, “Let’s not talk about linear perspective, Maria, let’s talk about you and me.” Not that the real Damien ever said anything like it, but you never knew.
Near the end of November she decided to skip a few lectures and get the train home for the weekend. “That’ll be nice,” commented Yvonne wistfully. “It must be good crack, and the fresh air and all.” Maria peeked at Yvonne’s ring finger; yes, the silver heart was pointing outward again. She could only deduce that her friend was a single woman and had no parties to go to that weekend; she invited her home.
Things began to go wrong at the station. Their train was delayed an hour and a half, and Yvonne claimed to have caught a cold sitting on her carpet bag on the draughty platform. Maria pointed out that any virus took several days to incubate. Yvonne resented the remark and spent the four-hour journey huddled in a corner of the carriage, sniffing loudly behind an old copy of Image.
They were met by Maria’s Uncle Jim and driven home in his rather doggy Fiat. “Is there a funny smell, or is it just my flu?” was Yvonne’s sole remark until they got home.
Opening the back door as the car chugged across the gravel, Maria’s mother was wordless at the sight of the new haircut. Yvonne, with a regretful giggle, said, “I know just how you feel, Mrs. Murphy. When I saw it first I thought, what has the girl done to herself?”
She perked up a little over dinner, setting Maria’s teeth on edge by apologizing every time she reached for the salt. They watched a James Bond film; Maria was annoyed with herself for wincing whenever one of her brothers shouted “There’s a gun in the umbrella!” or picked his nose.
The only place where she could be on her own was the bathroom. Maria slid the bolt over and sat on the sheepskin bath mat, a present from a butcher uncle five Christmases ago. Its creamy tendrils were soft between her fingers. She leaned back against the edge of the tub and let her eyes shut. Five minutes or so she could afford in here, before Yvonne would start worrying and knocking on the door to ask if Maria had cramps. Five minutes of silence, and the milky wool under her palm. Not that this felt like home anymore, now that she had brought a stranger to it. She always knew it was provincial, but this was the first time the house had made her cringe. Framed prints of anthropomorphic mongrels and little Dutch skaters over the beds, a footless Royal Doulton shepherdess on the mantelpiece, and (how could she not have remembered to hide it?) an old yellow-duck nailbrush lying on its back in the bath. Maybe she, not Yvonne, was the stranger here. Less than two months away, and already she had lost that sense of being home.
Time to hostess again; she slid back the bolt. Yvonne did not warm to the idea of sharing a double bed. Her beige silk pyjamas looked out of place against the blue cotton sheets. Maria lay stiffly in the dark listening to Yvonne’s “little tickly cough” and checking that all her limbs were on her side of the bed. God knows what conclusions would be jumped to if she shifted over even slightly in her sleep.
The next morning Yvonne didn’t think it advisable to go out in that downpour; they played a few mediocre games of chess, watched a Doris Day comedy, and irritated each other. Maria was just overcoming her urge to ask “Instead of constantly sniffing why don’t you just blow your nose?” when Yvonne asked languidly, “So what does one do on Saturday nights down here?”
Maria called up a precise mental image of Hogans’s fuggy interior; her dad’s farmer friends, the accordion player, the few male school friends of hers home for the weekend whom Yvonne might note under the heading of “talent.” No, she couldn’t face it. “Well, usually I’d head out with a gang of friends, but I thought we’d take it easy this
weekend, seeing as you’re not well.”
“Just so long as I’m not spoiling your fun.” Sniff. She followed Maria upstairs and wandered round her bedroom looking at ornaments and tapes. A charcoal drawing of a horse chestnut tree caught her eye. “Did you do this? It’s excellent. Though I must say I didn’t think that one you did of me was very like.”
“Nobody can see their own likeness; anybody else would have recognized you from it.” Maria yawned, covering her mouth. “A likeness is a sort of mask that everyone but yourself can see.”
“So my mask has hair on the bridge of its nose?”
Maria opened her throat to laugh for the first time that weekend. “I told you, it was shadow, not hair. The pencil was too hard.”
“Well, if you drew that Damien guy you’re so besotted with, you’d need a special oily charcoal.”
Maria couldn’t decide whether or not to ignore the remark. She wrapped her cold hands in the bulge of her Aran jumper. “Are you being subtle or something?”
Sliding down on the bed, Yvonne remarked, “I just can’t work out what you see in him. He’s a greasy, pretentious git.”
“I suppose so.”
Having expected more resistance, Yvonne halted and changed tracks. “And I wouldn’t be surprised if he turned out to be, you know.”
“What?”
“That way inclined.”
“No way.” She lightened her tone and untangled her fingers from the harsh Aran wool. “You’re really getting paranoid about the sexual orientation of my friends, aren’t you? Don’t worry, there are a few straight men left in the world.”
Reclining on her elbows, Yvonne balanced her white pumps on the footboard. “Well, that plait is a bit suspect. And he never socialises with the girls in our class.”
“Most days he’s too busy having lunch with me.” Instantly, Maria regretted her tone.
“Well, excuse me!” Yvonne’s mouth twisted in amusement. “Just tell me, what’s the attraction?”
“Don’t know. There isn’t any. He’s just worth talking to.” Maria slumped against the wall, her finger dusting the rim of the bookcase. “Yvonne, don’t you ever get sick of girls? The way they—we —talk about the weather, and smile to soften any harsh remark, and nod devoutly whenever they’re listening to some prat pontificate?”
“Isn’t that exactly what you do with Damien?”
She paused, wiping her dusty finger on her jeans. “No, that’s quite different. He treats me like an intellectual equal.”
“Gosh.”
At this rate they would have murdered each other before the end of the weekend. She could hear Mam chasing the lads up to bed; she lowered her voice in case they listened through the wall. “What are you getting at?”
“Just, I don’t see where you get your less-girlie-than-thou attitude,” Yvonne answered. “I mean the kind of generalisation you’ve been making about girls, you’d never let a guy away with that.”
“Yeah, but this is off the record,” said Maria with a strained grin.
“What about your famous flatmates? I’ll bet there’s nothing coy and girlie about them.”
“That’s different, they’re not really girls, they’re women.”
“I thought we were all called women nowadays.”
Maria played for time, readjusting the lid of a china ring box, a present from Thelma she had never used. “Well, then, they’re dykes.”
“That’s a really offensive word, Maria.”
“No, it’s not,” she protested, turning. “They use it themselves, it’s been reclaimed. Ruth says it comes from the Greek rain goddess Dike.”
“You’re the expert.” A minuscule curl of the lip. “But you still haven’t explained why it’s any different for, for women like them.”
“I’m only guessing,” Maria answered uncomfortably. “They don’t seem to have to play the same games as we do, with men. They play their own games.”
“Like what?” Yvonne leaned her elbows on her knees, eyes bright with curiosity.
Maria was tempted to whisper “Racquetball,” but thought better of it. “Ah, I don’t mean anything specific. How should I know, anyway? Just, their ‘going out together’ seems like our ‘best friends’ with a bit of ‘enemies’ thrown in.”
Yvonne nodded wisely. “You mean it’s more emotional than actually … sexual.”
“I didn’t say that.”
“But they’re not promiscuous?”
Maria shifted, her back against the wall. “You’re worse than a priest in confession. No, Jael and Ruth aren’t, but I don’t know if it’s a general rule.”
Yvonne meditated for a minute, then said, “It’s really rather sweet, isn’t it, that they have each other.” Then, catching Maria’s stare, she said, “Sorry, did that sound patronising?”
Lining up the battered spines of her George Eliot novels, Maria hunted for words. “See, I know it might be a bit sad later on when they’ve missed their chance of having kids, but for the moment it seems a perfectly valid way of life. Doesn’t it?”
Yvonne gave a tiny shiver, shifting to the rim of the bed. “I just find the physicality of it so hard to imagine.”
“Well, don’t try to, then.”
She ignored that. “And how can you put up with being a gooseberry? I shared a flat one summer with a pair of newly-weds, and it was so awkward.”
“They really don’t make me feel left out,” said Maria. She heard herself bleating and cleared her throat. “Remember those diagrams in electricity for the leaving cert? Well, I’m not blocking the circuit, I’m a loop in it.”
“What circuit?”
“Ruth and Jael. I think they need me to absorb some of the static. They say they’d be fighting like cats if I wasn’t around to distract them.”
Rubbing her forearms, Yvonne gave her a doubtful look. She suggested they go back down to the fire, as the cold was starting a tickle in her throat again.
That night the temperature dropped hour by hour. Maria lay flat on her back and willed blood into her feet; she curled up and hugged her icy knees to her breasts. She could not get warm. Two feet away, Yvonne’s satin back hunched. The crack in the curtains let in only a chill strip of moonlight. Maria inched onto her side. She pulled a tiny feather from the old pillow and tickled her upper lip with it. A childhood fantasy came back to her: She wished she had six sisters, three to each side of her, folded together like spoons, their warm brushed-cotton ribs rising and falling in unison.
She buried her nose in the smooth pillow and tucked the edge of the blanket round her ear. Mam’s aunt, she remembered, used to carry a hot potato in her coat pocket to school every day, so that she would be able to hold the chalk to write a sum on the board. It occurred to Maria now that the potato was a talisman. No doubt the great-aunt’s fingers still went numb but were comforted by the feel of the brown skin.
And where was her own hot potato tonight, this term, this lifetime? Maria edged down the bed until her head was submerged in rough blankets and the air grew musty. She had had enough of loitering on the outside, playing the chilly virgin, everybody’s helpful agony aunt. She wanted to feel something, anything, so overpowering that it would fill the space between her ribs with radiance. Not that she required happiness, at least not straightaway—just something hot enough to burn her hand.
“No, honestly.”
“Schmonestly.”
“Can’t handle another, I’ll pass out.” Maria’s belly hurt from laughter. She nudged the pint away.
Damien shoved it back across the table; the creamy head bobbed and almost slopped over. “You have to drink it now I’ve carried it through the madding crowd of elbows.”
She rested her lips on the rim of the glass and let the cream seep between them.
“Here, let me draw a face on the head, and if it stays all the way down, it’s a good pint.”
“Get those mucky fingers out of my head,” she roared. The law students at the next table raised their eyebrows. �
�I can do it myself.” She finished the cartoon face, then added a cross underneath.
He peered over her elbow. “What’s that, the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament symbol?”
“No, it’s the wimminy thing.”
“Spare me!” Damien grabbed the pint and drank, wide-mouthed, till the imprint had disappeared. “No feminism allowed after eleven o’clock or you’ll turn into a pumpkin. Come on with you now, let’s be having a wee dance.” He pulled her into the circle of bodies.
“Would you be imitating anyone’s accent there?” she shouted in his ear.
“Divil a bit!”
Maria gave a wrench to his beard. “Beast. Listen, I’m not sure if I can stand.”
“Here comes a slow set now, all you have to do is sway. How come I’m still in control of my limbs if I’ve had three more than you?”
“Boys have bigger bladders. Or maybe it all goes into the plait.”
She leaned against his bulk and let her eyelids slide shut. The music pivoted them, limp as hibernating bears. It was one of those songs that envelops you in its saxophone intro, and you think you remember and love it, and by halfway through it has become one of those sloppy ballads they play every Christmas. What was the name of the damn thing, something about a year or a heart. Weren’t they all? She put her head back to ask Damien and found his mouth on hers. It seemed impolite to twitch away. He tasted of smoke, oddly savoury. She opened her eyes but found his overhanging nose alarming, so she shut them again.
People are looking, thought Maria. The right people or the wrong people or the don’t-give-a-shit people?
His tongue in her mouth was harmless, thick; that came of talking too much, she decided. The dark curls of his beard were warm against her chin. She turned her mind off and dug deeper into the kiss.
Her name. Damien had disengaged and was shaking her shoulder.
“What did I do?”
“It’s past closing time; they’re kicking us all out.”
She shook herself awake. They were alone on the neon-outlined dance floor. The crowd was trickling out the swing doors; she saw a hand wave and recognized Galway’s wry smile. She waved back, shamefaced, but he had disappeared. The lethargic bar staff were upturning orange chairs on wet tables. “Oh, good lord, my bus.”
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