Together Forever

by Siân O'Gorman

  ‘Up your game?’

  ‘Just a bit. Not enough to win Wimbledon or anything, but enough not to embarrass myself by tripping over the balls or getting tangled in the net…’ my metaphor drifted away, exhausted. ‘Listen, I know it’s stupid and it goes against everything I’ve ever taught you about being yourself and not trying to fit in. I know that it’s not feminist or empowering, but for one night, just one night, I don’t want to look like a principal of a suburban national school. I want to look like… like utterly unlike me. I want to look nice.’ I didn’t want to tell her about Red. How could I explain that one? That I wanted to look nice for a man that wasn’t my husband and someone with whom I shared a secret past.

  ‘You do look nice,’ she said, loyally. ‘You always look nice. But if you want to look a little bit more glamorous, then I’ll help you.’

  ‘But I don’t want to take you away from your books.’

  ‘I need a break,’ she said. ‘I’ll just get you out of the house and then I’ll go back to them.’

  ‘Or go and see Alice and Meg?’ I suggested. ‘It is Friday night after all.’

  ‘They’ll be working too,’ she said, quickly. ‘Everyone is. Anyway, I’ll give you a hand.’

  ‘I don’t even know what’s fashionable anymore. I don’t even know how to get dressed. I mean, are jeans still even a thing? Or is it something else entirely. Dungarees or spacesuits. I have no idea.’

  ‘No, jeans are still a thing,’ she reassured. ‘But you can’t wear them with that.’ She eyed my blouse. ‘Take it off…’

  ‘But…’

  ‘Off.’ She scanned the contents of my wardrobe with the eye of a personal shopper. ‘Right then…’

  I felt almost giddy with delight, sharing this moment with her. I missed her, I had been so worried about her, yet here she was, bossing me about, being my daughter again, the one I loved with all my heart.

  ‘What about this?’ She held up a top on which I had spent a ridiculous amount of money and it had hung, reproachfully, in my wardrobe for three years. A daily reminder of my profligacy.

  ‘It’s not me. Too low-cut,’ I said. ‘And too tight. It might be okay if I was a yoga teacher, living in LA, existing on nettles. And had an entirely different personality. And face. And body. Then, then it would be gorgeous on me. But there’s not enough time. I mean, I can’t even touch my toes…’

  ‘So? Try it on.’

  I didn’t argue and pulled it on.

  ‘Now the jeans.’

  I did as I was told, wriggling in. They were tight but not insurmountable or un-get-in-able.

  ‘Good,’ said Rosie, narrow-eyed, with an air of Henry Higgins, surveying and scrutinising. ‘Now the shoes.’

  ‘I thought I could wear my flats. They’re comfortable and…’

  ‘Comfort?’ She looked at me as though I had suggested wearing a pair of novelty Garfield slippers. ‘Oh no, tonight is not about comfort…’

  ‘Who are you?’ I said. ‘What kind of creature have I raised? I thought high heels were a symbol of male oppression?’

  ‘Mum,’ she said. ‘It’s one night. Wearing high heels is not going to kill you. You wear those flat shoes every day. They’re like slippers.’

  ‘Which is why I wear them.’

  ‘These.’ She produced another vast waste of money. They weren’t me, respectable teacher, mother and politician’s wife. I had worn them only once and never again. ‘These are perfect.’

  ‘They are ridiculous,’ I insisted.

  ‘Try them on.’

  Wobbling fawn-like, I waited for Rosie’s verdict. Her beautiful face frowning with concentration. How could I regret any decision I had ever made when I had Rosie to show for it?

  ‘There’s one thing missing,’ she said. ‘One moment!’ She ran from the room and returned with a pair of hoop earrings which she had borrowed from me and never returned. ‘And these.’ She stepped back while I looped them through my ears. ‘Right,’ she said with triumph. ‘You are perfect. Beautiful, actually.’

  ‘Really?’ I was pathetically grateful for the compliment.

  She laughed. ‘One hundred per cent yes. You look like my mum, but different.’ She was the Rosie of a year ago, before this year of exam stress and the end of things with Jake. Smiling, delighted at her success in the fashion makeover.

  ‘You remind me of Rosaleen,’ I said. ‘I called you after her, you know. Little rose, Rosaleen and Rosie.’

  She came over and hugged me and, for a moment, we held each other, as though she was still my little girl and needed one of my long hugs.

  ‘Rosie?’ I said when we pulled away. ‘Everything okay?’

  She nodded. ‘Have a good time, Mum. You won’t be too late, will you?’

  I shook my head. ‘Are you worried about me?’

  ‘No. I just… I just like you being at home, that’s all.’

  ‘I won’t be late, I promise.’

  And she smiled as I waved from the front door, those Rosaleen blue eyes.

  *

  ‘You look gorgeous.’ Clodagh eyed me approvingly, swiping two glasses of champagne from a passing tray and handing one to me. ‘I knew you were still in there, under the school-teacher exterior, the old Tabitha lurks.’

  ‘Shut up, Clodes,’ I said. ‘It’s easy for you. You don’t have to try. Tonight, I am the product of my daughter. Rosie was my stylist.’

  ‘Well, she did a wonderful job. What’s this?’ I had handed over her present. ‘Oooh…’ She tore off the paper. ‘Pride and Prejudice! Thank you!’

  ‘It’s a special edition. And read this…’ I said, pulling out a card I’d made.

  ‘You are invited to a Jane Austen weekend in Bath with your best friend, Tabitha, who, by the way, is paying for everything. Just say the date! Really?’ she squealed. ‘That is the best present ever. Are you sure?’

  ‘Totally. I can’t wait myself. I thought we could go to Bath for a posh weekend away and have treatments in the spa there and do all things Jane Austen.’ At college, Clodagh was obsessed with Jane Austen and wrote her final dissertation on female empowerment in the novels of… etc. ‘I mean,’ I said, ‘we can’t not celebrate your fortieth birthday! Well, we did, two years ago and it was so good, we should do it all over again.’ Thinking back, that was last time I had had fun.

  She laughed. ‘Tab, this is why you’re my best friend. No one in the world knows me like you do. Thank you!’ She clutched me hard. ‘Let’s go in the autumn. Deal?’

  ‘Just say the date… my finger is hovering over the Ryanair confirm flights button.’

  She smiled and dropped her voice. ‘It’s the perfect trip for two women in their mid-forties…’

  ‘Mid? Early, surely!’ I dropped my voice significantly. ‘We’re only forty-two.’

  ‘Whatever, it’s immaterial, really. Just remember, yesterday I was thirty-nine. Tonight I am a mere forty. It’s magic.’

  ‘Got it. Now, who’s here? Anyone famous, glamorous. I am expecting top-notch celebrities. Some scandal that will end up in the tabloids in the morning.’ I looked around and spotted a couple of famous faces. A few soap stars. A DJ was over in the corner playing music I had never heard before – it certainly wasn’t Johnny Logan. ‘Where’s Max?’

  ‘Somewhere over there,’ she said, waving a hand vaguely. ‘On his mobile probably. Or having a fag.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘No one is meant to know he’s a smoker because I think he thinks it shows weakness. I mean, he is obsessed with his health. He’s always drinking green slime and worrying about the lines on his face. He doesn’t want people to know his fallibilities.’

  I laughed. ‘But he does drink, doesn’t he?’

  ‘Are you mad? You can’t work in the media and be teetotal. You’d have your NUJ card taken off you.’ She paused. ‘He’s a man of contrasts. But that’s what makes him interesting.’ She paused. ‘Kind of.’

  ‘Clodagh! Loveen!’ In front of us was a vision of shimmering green. Long red hair
cascading over her shoulders, voluptuous curves barely contained. Bridget O’Flaherty. She looked even more amazing in the flesh. Fleshier, really.

  ‘Bridget!’ Clodagh hugged her, air-kissing as though they were long-lost friends. ‘So lovely that you came.’

  ‘I would not have missed this for anything. I just love parties, especially ones like this. It’s full of the old dinosaurs of Irish television. All those ones who you thought had popped their clogs years ago. I mean, I just saw Val Connolly. Who exhumed him?’

  ‘Val?’ said Clodagh. I could tell she was doing her best to hold on to her smile ‘He runs his own production company now. Makes millions.’ She turned to me and imperceptibly widened her eyes giving a tiny shake of her head.

  ‘Well, not as disinteresting as I initially thought,’ said Bridget. ‘I always say, there are only two points to a man. One, if he’s drop-dead gorgeous, or two, if he’s loaded. Normally, I like both.’

  Clodagh managed to mouth ‘see what I mean’ to me. ‘Tab,’ she said, ‘I should have introduced you… this is Bridget O’Flaherty, our new weather...

  ‘The new meteorologist and television personality,’ said Bridget. ‘Or that’s what my agent wants me to call myself. It’s meaningless, to me, but she insists on it. Absolutely insists. Says I’m not just a pretty face. Well, she says I’m that, but she would wouldn’t she, being my mother and everything. Meteorologist and television personality, that’s me! Anyway, pleased to meet you.’ She shook my hand.

  ‘Tabitha,’ I said. ‘Clodagh’s friend. No media connections. Just here for the free champagne.’

  ‘So, how old are you, Clodagh?’ she said.

  ‘Forty,’ said Clodagh, quickly, eyes giving a flicker.

  ‘Really?’ Bridget raised a sceptical brow.

  ‘Yes really! Goodness me, you don’t think I am younger than that, do you?’ went on Clodagh. ‘You don’t think I am pretending to be older than I actually am to lend myself a sense of gravitas?’

  ‘Gravitas? Is that something to do with gravity?’

  ‘No,’ said Clodagh. ‘It’s to do with gravy. On your roast chicken.’

  Bridget looked confused, but I was beginning to laugh, discreetly.

  ‘We all like gravitas, Bridget,’ Clodagh continued. ‘Except some of us were born with it, some of us have gravitas thrust upon us and others don’t even know what it is.’

  ‘Oh do fuck off,’ said Bridget, sweetly. ‘All I’m saying is that you don’t look forty…’

  ‘Nor do you,’ said Clodagh.

  ‘But obviously I don’t!’ said Bridget.

  ‘You look fifty!’ Clodagh drained her glass of champagne. ‘Oh, aren’t you?’

  ‘I’m fecking thirty-one,’ said Bridget, rattled. ‘It’s just that I’ve been working – professionally – since I was five. It’s really ageing, those late nights and having to get on the road again. Fecking Riverdance. Even now, if I walk into a shop and they are playing the music, I can feel my feet start to twitch, and my knees start to ache. I can hear the voice of our teacher shouting at us to keep on. I can’t walk around Temple Bar or any of the tourist shops. It’s all Mammy’s fault. She put me on the stage, spotted my talent early. Her own dancing career was cruelly cut short by a terrible accident that involved a bullock at the St Patrick’s Day parade when she was twelve. Never got over it and she put all her effort into me. When my knees packed in, she thought television was our only answer. She’s over there, actually.’ She pointed out a woman who looked like a slightly older version of Bridget, the same look entirely, but she was shorter and her hair an unnatural shade of red.

  Then Bridget suddenly shouted. ‘Selfie!’ And put both arms around us and held up her phone. ‘This, ladies, is going on Twitter,’ she said. ‘I try and post every fifteen minutes. Everyone smile!’

  And just as I was clinched in this media sandwich, I saw a face looking over at me. Red. He waved his hand, an indiscernible expression on his face, while I disentangled myself from Bridget’s limbs.

  Maybe it was the effect of the champagne, but all I wanted to do was put my two hands around his face and pull him towards me and kiss him. I wanted to remember what he tasted like, what it felt to feel his breath on mine, feel the heat of his skin on me.

  *

  Clodagh passed me another glass of Prosecco as soon as Bridget had gone to air-kiss and schmooze others. ‘You look like you need this,’ she said. ‘I know I do. What do you think of her?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘What’s wrong with you? You’re miles away.’

  ‘She’s…’ I came back to the conversation. ‘She’s just like all you media types. Self-obsessed.’

  She sank her wine. ‘You’re right,’ she said. ‘But who else would put them through this except for self-obsessed, masochistic narcissists.’ She lowered her voice. ‘Talking of another one.’ And then, louder, ‘Max! I thought you’d disappeared somewhere.’

  And there was Max, shorter and plainer than I had remembered, wearing a black polo-neck, like a miniature James Bond, or at least someone trying to channel James Bond. And failing. He didn’t smile. ‘No, but I’m not going to stay much longer,’ he said. ‘I’m going to head off.’ He nodded at me, ignoring Clodagh’s obvious disappointment.

  ‘Max, how’s it going?’ I said, while Clodagh began speaking.

  ‘But, it’s my party,’ she said. ‘It’s only getting started.’

  ‘Clodagh. I’m tired. I’ve been working all week. I am not fecking twenty-five any longer.’

  ‘Excuse me a moment,’ I said, wondering why Clodagh bothered her arse with this charmless excuse for a boyfriend. And she questioned why I had stayed with Michael! Yet there she was, with someone who, every time I met him, displayed as much charisma as a boiled turnip. He looked not unlike one too.

  For a moment, I stood, not knowing what to do. I was aware of Red out of the corner of my eye, still in conversation with someone. I couldn’t walk up to him. He’d waved. Was that enough. I mean, I’d see him again on Monday. We didn’t need to talk to each other tonight, did we? But then, he was suddenly alone, the man he’d been talking to had gone. And Red looked directly at me. The two of us stood, watching each other, in the middle of the melee, the noise, the talking, the braying. Bridget was taking another selfie in the midst of a group. I recognised Lucinda, Clodagh’s producer, who was trying not to be head locked into the group.

  Without thinking, we moved towards each other and then we were standing in front of one another.

  ‘Hi Red,’ I said. ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘Grand, you?’

  ‘Lovely thanks. How’s your dad? It was really nice to see him again,’ I began gabbling. ‘He’s looking well, better than I thought he would, you know, after a stroke. And the house is the same. It was nice to see it again. And tell him that Michael didn’t have any of Peggy’s cake, but Rosie and I loved it…’

  ‘She makes a good cake,’ he said. ‘I think she might put whiskey into it.’

  ‘No wonder it was good. Maybe I shouldn’t have given so much of it to Rosie. But it was good to see her eating something.’

  He smiled. ‘I remember once finishing off the sherry trifle for Christmas… I was eight. Oh my God. Mam had made me a separate one, in a tiny bowl, without sherry, but I polished off the adults’ one. I’ve never had sherry since. Sick as a dog. I can still smell it now. There’s that wine shop in Sandycove, and I can’t even walk past because of the smell. It smells of being sick on Christmas night.’

  ‘I don’t think that is what they are going for,’ I said, laughing. ‘Anyway, you’ve never told me that!’ I was behaving as though there hadn’t been an eighteen year hiatus, as though we were still together.

  ‘Tab,’ he spoke carefully, reminding me that there was a yawning gap between us, ‘there’s a lot you don’t know about me.’

  ‘I know, I’m sorry.’ Jesus, I was forgetting myself, slipping into a place, a feeling, I had no business being.


  ‘Forget it. Okay?’

  I nodded. And breathe. And smile. I thought.

  ‘So,’ he said, as though we were starting all over again. ‘Having a good time?’

  ‘Well, I just met Bridget O’Flaherty, weather supremo, meteorological tsar…so that was exciting.’ I was working hard to keep things light, to stop myself from either slipping into our easy repartee which left me confused or to start crying and force him to confront what happened. Neither was going to help our current working situation but all I knew was, standing there with him, his body close to mine, bending to speak into each other’s ears so we could hear each other above the music, I was happy. For the first time in years, I was happy. I could feel it, a warmth in my stomach, a fizzing in my synapses, and a lightness in my toes. Happiness. A strange and lovely feeling. Fun. I was in danger of actually having fun.

  ‘Tsarina.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Weather tsarina, surely?’

  ‘Indeed, weather tsarina, sultana… princess of precipitation? Which do you prefer?’

  ‘Sultana, definitely. I see no raisin not to.’

  ‘Red!’ I giggled. ‘You can do better than that.’

  ‘The problem is, I can’t,’ he said, making us both laugh again. ‘So meeting this sultana then. Highlight of your life?’

  ‘The highlight,’ I said. ‘Apart from the time I met Orville the duck at the stage door of the Gaiety after the panto.’

  He laughed. ‘You see, I did not know that about you. Mine was meeting Ray Houghton. I thought I was going to have a heart attack. I was eighteen,’ he chuckled. ‘Old enough to know better, but he was such a hero. Scoring that goal at Italia ’90. But he was well used to idiot boys like me being goggle-eyed and slack-jawed. A real hero. You don’t meet many of them every day.’

  ‘A bit better than Orville,’ I said. ‘And there I was thinking that meeting a green puppet could be the greatest brush with fame and you go and trump me with your story of meeting a man who single-handedly improved the mental health of an entire nation.’