The Girl I Used to Know

by Faith Hogan

  ‘I’m always good,’ Douglas said and his voice held that middle ground where Tess wasn’t sure if something had passed between them that excluded her.

  ‘Come on, we’ll be late,’ Tess said, pulling him out the door as she wrapped her shoulders in the long shawl she’d picked up to match her ball gown. The bells across the city struck out seven chimes in night air that was chilly, but the overhead clouds held any frost at bay.

  They walked along in silence for most of the journey to the hotel, both of them caught up in their own thoughts. Later, when they had finished dancing and drinking, she would forget the niggling fear that had crept up inside her in the flat.

  Dublin, on a dry winter’s night, heaved with a heavy spell that cast a net of uneasiness about the city. Tess felt it as they walked along the empty streets after the ball. It was as though they’d spent the evening at odds, as if they’d had an argument she had not been told about. So, she had drunk a little too much of the free punch and felt it go to her head in a woozy remote way that dulled the discomfort between them. Perhaps it clouded it just enough to give her courage to pull Douglas drunkenly to her when they turned into the square. The idea that something was amiss seemed as if it was a figment of her overactive imagination. She thought that he would kiss her wantonly, hold her and perhaps make some promise that would meld them in some way more than before. But instead he pulled away with a ferocity that almost sent her spinning.

  ‘What is it, Douglas, what’s wrong?’ she asked, trying to meet his eyes, but he looked away and began to walk back towards the flat.

  ‘It’ll be bright soon,’ he said needlessly as he hurried on.

  Her shoes, cheap and uncomfortable, echoed their pointed sound against the pavements.

  ‘Oh, Douglas,’ Tess said, catching him up, not quite sure what to make of him, she linked her hand through his. ‘It was a wonderful night, better than I’d ever thought it could be… you and me and the music, I’m so happy.’ She did a little twirl, admiring how her dress swirled out and tapered back in again. Tess threaded her arm through his again, but he pushed it aside quickly. She felt the rebuff, even more acutely than when she’d tried to kiss him. ‘What is it?’

  ‘We shouldn’t have gone to the ball, not together. This, it’s all wrong, the Sunset Club and all those nights afterwards, I’d never have…’ He didn’t look at her, instead he stared ahead at some unimportant point in the road.

  ‘What do you mean, Douglas? It was…’ her voice trailed off. ‘But we’re…’

  ‘We’re what?’ He turned on her now. ‘What are we, really, do you think?’

  ‘I’m in love with you, Douglas, we’re in love.’

  ‘In love?’ He laughed cruelly then. ‘With you?’ He shook his head, as though nothing could be further from the truth. ‘Tess, we’re not in love. I’m not in love with you. I’ll admit, that first day in college, I thought maybe…’ He ran his hand through his hair, pulled that thick flop of side fringe back from his eyes. ‘Maybe when you seemed so pure, that first day. You were untouched, I could see it a mile off. You were innocent, different to all the other girls I met at university – they’re all so easy, giving themselves away at the first chance, as though their virginity was something to be discarded like an old coat.’ His expression changed now.

  ‘But you kissed me, that night on the steps at the flat. You walked me to the Sunset Club every week, you…’ Tess felt the reality of what had passed between them over the past few weeks and maybe what it meant to both of them. Had she let herself become what he seemed to despise so much? Had she, through loving him, managed to lose him?

  ‘No, Tess. You kissed me. I’ll admit, I couldn’t keep away, but isn’t that the thing with girls like you. You just trap men, you, with your swinging hips and your tight skirts and putting my hand places that would screw up a saint’s brain.’

  ‘You didn’t have to kiss me back.’ It was a cheap remark, but Tess could feel a sense of desperation rise within her. She was certain that if she lost him on this walk home, things would never be right between them again.

  ‘No. You’re right there and I’m…’ He waited a moment, examined the footpath intently, and then she noticed something. He was the same as her father, he couldn’t say sorry. Not that she wanted him to be sorry, not for any of it. No, she wanted something else from him, but it wasn’t sorry.

  ‘Well then,’ she said as they turned into the top of Swift Square. ‘So what now?’ He had to lead the way. She prayed he’d chose to lead them where she wanted to go, even if she feared deep down that he had no intention of it.

  ‘I suppose, we can’t just fall out with each other, I mean, there’s Nancy to think of too.’ He shook his head and she knew he was just working to keep the worry from his voice. How had she not seen the way he felt? He thought she was trying to trap him, in some way to lead him astray and now she could feel the resentment from him and worse, the shame. She shivered, realizing in one sobering heartbeat that if she had found herself pregnant, Douglas would have turned his back on her.

  ‘Goodnight, Douglas,’ she managed before she let herself into the flat. Inside the door, she closed her eyes, willing for just a few seconds that she could find some way to turn back the clock. She knew that it would take going back weeks to make things right. She had a feeling that tonight had somehow confirmed for Douglas what he’d suspected for some time. He thought she was cheap – and Douglas would not want anyone who was cheap. She knew he was only half-right, because now, even if she was cheap, she was empty too, she flung herself onto her little single bed and cried until the sun came up – it didn’t make things any better.

  Chapter 19

  January 14 – Wednesday

  ‘How would you know if someone was depressed?’ Robyn asked Tess one afternoon when she dropped by to check on Matt. They were sitting at the back of the flat, overlooking the little yard as night drew in too fast for Tess’s liking. Outside, the final drops of shadowy winter daylight sieved through patterned blocks that gave a teasing interstitial view of the lush forbidden garden just beyond. Tess was going through some newspapers she’d liberated from the office she’d been working in earlier that week. A wad of discount vouchers arranged at her elbow, a heavy pair of black scissors wielded for the next incursion.

  ‘Well, I don’t know, do I?’ Honestly, the questions that child asked sometimes. ‘I suppose they’d be very miserable. They’d look sad, wouldn’t do a lot of laughing. Why?’ It suddenly dawned on Tess that perhaps the girl thought she was depressed. After all, Tess could hardly be described as a jolly sort and she’d be hard-pressed to remember the last time she’d laughed; properly laughed that is. And, that wasn’t just down to hearing about Douglas. Funny, but that hadn’t made her feel as she’d have expected at all. Perhaps those connections had been all too long ago, because rather than feeling bereft or grief, the news from Nancy made her nostalgic, not depressed at all.

  ‘Oh, no reason, I was just wondering.’

  ‘Well you must have a reason.’ Tess looked at the girl now. She was an odd sort of a thing, really. She was both childish and advanced; she was what Tess would call, unconventional. She must be fourteen at least, but she was a scrap of a thing, perhaps not yet ready to grow up on any front. Tess didn’t know a lot about teenagers; apart from having been one herself, she was clueless. The world was a different place when Tess was fourteen. The Ireland of her youth didn’t entertain depression, drugs or even adolescence. These days, most fourteen-year-old girls were traipsing about the city making a nuisance of themselves around make-up counters where they could not afford to buy what they stuck their tacky fingers in. ‘Do you think…’ she couldn’t finish the sentence, it might make it more real.

  ‘Me?’ Robyn looked at her, misunderstanding the concern on Tess’s face. ‘No, I’m not depressed, I’m just quiet – everyone says girls my age are meant to be moody, right? My mum says I’m at a difficult stage.’ She screwed up her face as though wondering h
ow well she was managing it.

  ‘Do they now?’ Tess shook her head, really some people know far more than what’s good for them.

  ‘I think my mum might be depressed.’ The words were an undertone, murmured into the cat’s soft fur. For a moment, it felt as if the noiselessness of the flat might swig them down into a hollow echoing of the words last spoken. Then Matt alleviated the awkwardness with the start of a loud purr that stretched on as though it might never stop. Silently, Tess thanked him, but she knew, she had to make sure that Robyn was okay.

  ‘Why do you think that, Robyn?’ Tess asked in the softest tone she could manage, it was one she’d kept stored away for a long time and it sounded unfamiliar as it slipped into the fragile kitchen air.

  ‘Sometimes I hear her crying when she doesn’t realise anyone is around. I watch her moving about the house and it’s as if she doesn’t really think about things, like she’s on autopilot and then she pats her eyes and blames allergies, but she’s not allergic to anything so far as I know.’

  ‘I see,’ Tess said and she knew she was so far out of her depth with this. God, there was a time she might have welcomed news of Amanda’s misery, but now, well, things had changed, she felt a twinge of something close to empathy for the woman. Much to Tess’s surprise, she really couldn’t wish that kind of unhappiness on her. In Tess’s day, that was what it was, nobody talked about depression. People didn’t get depressed, they got a bit ‘down in the dumps’, and then they got told to ‘pull themselves together’. Then they were either ‘grand’, or it was all down to ‘trouble with the nerves’. No. Tess really didn’t know a lot about being depressed. ‘Well, there’s probably no good telling her to cheer up,’ Tess smiled at Robyn, the obvious solution now scurrying to the front of her mind. ‘Have you told your dad about this?’

  ‘No.’ She shook her head slowly. ‘No, I don’t think he can help. You see, I think he’s the reason she’s upset.’

  ‘I see,’ Tess said, trying to catch the right thing to say before it dashed away from her too fast. Maybe she should feel a twinge of guilt, knowing what she knew, but really, Amanda King would not thank her for telling her what in all likelihood she already knew. ‘If it’s problems between them, you may just have to let them sort things out for themselves.’ She reached out and placed her hand on the girl’s sleeve, an automatic response that was so far from normal for Tess it made her catch her breath. All the same, it felt nice to reach out to someone who needed you, even if it was only for a moment. ‘I suppose if there’s anything that I can do, you know, to help…’ Of course there wasn’t, what did Tess know about depression or nerves, or Amanda King for that matter.

  Robyn looked at her now with those searching blue eyes that seemed to see far more than was their due, considering how young they were. ‘Could you talk to her?’

  ‘I can’t see what good that would do. She needs to get proper help, if it is what you think it is.’ It felt strange talking about Amanda King like this, she might almost be a different woman to the person Tess had known for so long – it made her seem vulnerable, almost pitiable.

  ‘Our school guidance councillor said that sometimes people who are suffering with depression do everything they can not to know it. You could find out if there’s something wrong at least.’

  ‘Oh dear. I’m afraid I’m the very last person your mother would tell if something was wrong.’ Tess watched as a single tear slid down the child’s cheek. It brought up in her the uncomfortable reminder that she’d seen Richard in the act, so to speak. While she’d laughed at the time, perhaps she had some responsibility to do something that would set things right, if only for Robyn. Tess had hung that notion on a peg far back in her conscience until now. ‘It’s not that I wouldn’t help, if I thought it would make a difference, but I think I’d probably only make things worse.’ Even though it was the truth, on this occasion Robyn was too young to understand.

  ‘That’s okay,’ Robyn said and she stared hard at the charcoal evening drawing closer through the window. Silence yawned in the small space between them. It seemed to Tess she was willing the tears to stop. In the end, she wiped them with her sleeve and Tess thought her heart would break at the child’s hushed misery. When Robyn turned from the table to sit with Matt, Tess wanted to say something. There was nothing to say that wouldn’t just give Robyn false hope and that would be a cruel thing to do.

  The truth was, Tess had never seen more of Amanda King. Each day, it seemed no matter how she timed it, there was Amanda power-walking towards her as Tess took her daily constitutional. Typical Amanda, she was still walking in the wrong direction, even if Tess changed her track, she couldn’t imagine walking alongside her. God, that would be a penance even Tess didn’t deserve. No, she could no more hold out any help to the child’s mother than Amanda King would take it from her

  *

  The following day dawned brighter and breezier than the weather forecast promised. It seemed there was no good reason not to keep her appointment at the hospital, so Tess set off early for St. Mel’s. With a little luck, she might get there before the other appointments and have it over with quickly. She thought it was funny how hospitals never seemed to change, even if they added on extensions or built them from new; there was something in their fibre that remained the same. Tess looked about her now, the waiting room was little more than a corridor. A cream-painted, shiny-floored corridor. She watched purposeful nurses and doctors move to the beat of their own self-important steps, rubber kissing tiles in a tell-tale drawn-out squeak. They were all ants – grey and white on a constant rotation along corridors identical and unending. She wondered if it was just her, or did they move slower now than they had years ago? It felt that way with everything these days, as far as Tess could tell.

  ‘Mrs Cuffe?’ a young nurse looked about the waiting room, her eyes hardly falling on any of the patients waiting to be next.

  ‘It’s Miss Cuffe, actually,’ Tess said as she gathered up her bag, coat and the plaster she intended to dispose of today.

  ‘Of course it is,’ the nurse, a whippet of a thing, murmured and then hardly under her breath, ‘how could I have forgotten.’

  ‘Pardon?’ Tess said, but she wasn’t really annoyed. Remembering her was a compliment in a place that saw hundreds of people pass through it every week. It was an acknowledgment of her unique personality.

  ‘Ah Tess. So you came back to us, eh?’ Dr Kilker said in salute. He had the look of a man who was ready to play a practical joke on her.

  ‘Yes, well, fond and all as I am of your banter, we do have to take this plaster off sometime, don’t we?’ She was being facetious but he seemed to enjoy it.

  ‘I suppose,’ he said, but his eyes were twinkling. Surely, he wouldn’t bandage her up again? ‘How have you been feeling?’ He looked into her eyes now with that intensity that made her feel he knew her too well for her liking.

  ‘Well enough, I’m not one to complain, I just get on with things.’

  ‘Yes, but I sense you enjoy a challenge.’ Dr Kilker smiled now. ‘And the arm, does it feel… better?’

  ‘It feels as it always has, the very same, only now I’m dragging your big awkward plaster about with me.’

  ‘Well, let’s see if we can do something about that today, eh?’ His voice was even and, for a moment, Tess wondered if anything ruffled him. He nodded towards one of the young nurses. ‘Let’s get this plaster off and then we’ll take a quick X-ray before we make any big decisions.’ Then he was off again, to the next patient, doling out his own particular brand of humorous treatment.

  The rest of the day seemed to fall into the antiseptic haze of the hospital. They insisted on putting her in a wheelchair, which she absolutely did not need. ‘It was my arm, you fools,’ she said to their unheeding ears. ‘Wheelchairs are for old people, for sick people,’ she growled at them, but the orderlies didn’t seem to have a word of English between them. The more she barked, the more they crashed her about, so she gripped
her handbag tighter and swore at them even if they pretended not to hear. She might as well be on a roller coaster when they took some of the hospital corners at breakneck speed. They shunted her about endless corridors from the outpatients to the X-ray and back again. Two X-rays later and the junior doctors who were studying her slides were none the wiser.

  ‘God, will someone bring back old Dr Kilker. At least he can make a decision,’ she blew out the words, exhausted with half a day wasted and no nearer to getting home.

  ‘Good job I haven’t gone to lunch so.’ Dr Kilker was behind her. ‘Nice to be missed. How on earth will you get along when I retire, Tess?’ he said, pushing his glasses a little further up his nose to study the slide on the light box before him.

  ‘I’ll try not to break any more arms,’ she said drily. ‘Now, can I go home?’

  ‘Hmm.’ His stomach rumbled loudly and he patted it for reassurance, but was non-committal in his reply. ‘Let’s try and put some work on it without the plaster,’ he said, nodding towards an empty cubicle nearby. ‘Have you used it, since the plaster came off?’

  ‘Well… it’s not as if I’ve had much of a chance what with the Stig driving me about the place like we’re on a time trial.’ Honestly, Dr Kilker was the most exasperating person she’d ever met. ‘No. But I’m confident it’ll be fine, I’m hardly going to be lifting weights or directing traffic,’ she said, steeling her gaze so he knew there was no mistaking her resolve.

  ‘Right, why aren’t I fully convinced?’ He nodded to the others who seemed happy to make a hasty retreat and leave them to it. ‘Look, Tess, you’ve had a nasty fall and, more than that, a break at your age, which can lead to all sorts of things. Your blood pressure is not as low as it was, but I know it’s been dangerously low. We both know that you’re not in your twenties anymore,’ he shook his head, good-naturedly, ‘at our age, well, we have to be careful. That’s all. I’m happy to see you walking out of here right now without a bandage or a further check-up, but if you feel any strain on that wrist, it could do quite a bit of damage.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Half an hour either way, should be enough to sort you out for sure.’ He smiled to himself. ‘Come on, you can leave the chair there, but bring your coat and bag.’