by Marian Keyes
I would have killed for a mood alterer. Anything. It didn’t have to be Valium. A bottle of brandy would have done.
In mad agitation, I made to get up and go to confront Dr Billings and insist that he read it to me.
‘Sit down,’ Celine ordered, suddenly very firm.
‘Wha… at?’
‘Sit down, this time you won’t be able to bully your way into getting what you want,’ she said.
I was dazed by the implication that I’d been a bully on other occasions.
‘You’re too used to instant gratification,’ she went on. ‘It’ll do you good to wait.’
‘So you have seen this questionnaire?’
‘No, I haven’t.’
‘Well, why are you talking about me and instant gratification?’
‘Everyone who comes in here has spent most of their adult life seeking instant gratification,’ she said, reverting to her mild, motherly manner again. ‘It’s a fundamental part of the addict’s personality. You’re no different. Although I know you’d like to think you are.’
Fucking, smug bitch, I thought, with a flash of hatred. I’ll make her sorry. Before I leave here, I’ll have her on her knees apologizing for being so mean to me.
‘But by the time you leave you’ll be agreeing,’ she smiled.
I stared sullenly at my lap.
‘Have another cup of tea,’ she offered. ‘And some biscuits.’
In silence I accepted them. I wanted to show her how disgusted I was by not eating a thing, but a chocolate biscuit is a chocolate biscuit.
‘How are you now?’ Celine asked after a while.
‘I’m cold,’ I said.
‘It’s the shock,’ said Celine.
I was pleased with that. It meant it was OK to feel as dreadful as I did.
‘I’m sleepy,’ I said a while later.
‘It’s the shock,’ Celine repeated.
Again, I nodded with satisfaction. Correct answer.
‘It’s your body trying to cope with something unpleasant,’ she continued. ‘Normally you’d use a drug to get you through the pain.’
Sorry, I thought, I’ll have to deduct points for that.
But I didn’t react because I reckoned it was her job to say it. For a few minutes, I ate my HobNobs and drank my tea and I thought I’d reached a plateau of calm. But as I finished the last biscuit the churning anguish returned as bad as ever. I was baffled by Luke’s cruelty. It stung like a slap on sunburnt skin. First he ditched me, then he got me into tons of trouble. Why?
And that wasn’t all I had to contend with, I realized, shifting my focus to the first shock I’d had. That the Cloisters wasn’t the celebrity-packed, luxury hotel I’d expected. In the great horror of the Luke questionnaire drama, I’d briefly forgotten about it.
I was in a dirty, shabby dump of a treatment centre full of ugly, fat, rough alcoholics and drug addicts. There was no longer any celebrity sheen, no gymnasium gloss to distract from what the Cloisters really was.
Then my rage at Luke came back. I was angrier than ever.
‘Luke Costello is a lying bastard,’ I spat in tearful fury.
Celine laughed.
But in a kindly way.
Just to confuse me
‘What’s so funny?’ I demanded.
‘Rachel, it’s my experience that what people say on those forms is true,’ Celine supplied. ‘I’ve worked here for seventeen years and not once has someone lied in them.’
‘There’s always a first time,’ I quipped.
‘Have you thought about what an ordeal it must have been for Luke to write what he did?’
‘Why would it be an ordeal?’ I said in surprise.
‘Because if he knows enough about you to be able to comment on your addiction, he knows you well enough to care about you. He must have known his revelations would hurt you. No one is comfortable doing that to someone they love.’
‘You don’t know him.’ I was beginning to gather steam. ‘He’s a nasty piece of work. It’s not just the questionnaire. He’s always been a liar.’
Has he? a part of me wondered in surprise.
Who cares? another bit of my brain replied. He is now, OK?
‘You didn’t make a very wise choice of boyfriend,’ Celine said, with another of those plump, housewifey, bread-bakery smiles.
That threw me. For a moment I didn’t know what to say. Then I rallied. When in doubt, flatter.
‘I know I didn’t,’ I said earnestly. ‘You’re absolutely right, Celine, I can see that now.’
‘Or maybe he’s not a bad person, at all,’ she said mildly. ‘Maybe you just want to believe he is, so that you can discount any information he gives about your addiction.’
Why did she think she knew so much about it? I wondered. She was only a bloody nurse. All she was good for was sticking thermometers up people’s bums!
25
My consumption of Celine’s last Club Milk coincided with the others being let out of group. Time to return to my own planet.
When I got to the dining-room, sleepy from shock and sugar, I felt as though I’d been away a long time.
Neil the wanker was still the centre of attention. Surrounded by a circle of people, nodding sympathetically and making murmury, agreeing noises. I concluded that they were all wife-beating, lying drunks as well. Even the women. I could hear him complaining ‘I feel so betrayed, I can’t believe what she’s done to me, and she’s bonkers, you know, she should be in a mental home, not me…’
I took a quick pause from hating Luke so that I could hate Neil instead. Anyway, his seconds as the most interesting thing in the dining-room were numbered. I had a disaster, a real disaster, which would blow his one right out of the water. His disaster wasn’t worthy to touch the hem of the garment of my disaster!
Trying to exude beauty and tragedy, I stood in the doorway.
Right on cue, Chris looked up.
‘I thought you were going home,’ he said, with a wink and elbow smile.
My wistful-heroine look wobbled uncertainly. He’d been nice to me earlier, why wasn’t he being nice to me now?
‘Cheer up,’ he twinkled. ‘I’m sure some of the lads would be delighted to give you a massage, one of those mutual full body ones. They can ask Sadie for some chip oil.’
‘They can ask, but they won’t get,’ called Sadie, who happened to be bustling lumpily past.
I winced with embarrassment, as I wondered if everyone was laughing at me for thinking the Cloisters was a health farm.
‘It’s not that,’ I said, hurt. ‘Something else has happened.’
I was almost glad that Luke had stitched me up so viciously. It would knock the unwelcome flippancy out of Chris good and proper. How dare he? Chip oil indeed! This was serious.
‘A questionnaire has arrived?’ He quirked an eyebrow at me.
Instantly on the defensive, I jerked my head up at him. ‘How do you know?’
‘One usually comes when you’ve been here a couple of days,’ Chris said, his face serious. To my relief he seemed to have stopped laughing at me. ‘And the shit hits the fan. At least the first instalment does. Who’s it from?’
‘My boyfriend.’ My eyes filled with tears. ‘My ex-boyfriend, I mean.
‘You wouldn’t believe what he said,’ I said, pleased by the fat tears rolling down my face. I was counting on them to elicit sympathy and lots of comforting, physical contact from Chris.
Sure enough, he gently led me to a chair and pulled another up close, kindness on his face, our knees almost touching.
Bingo!
‘I probably would believe what he said, you know,’ Chris said. He stroked his hand along my forearm with an intimacy that embarrassed, yet pleased me. ‘I’ve been here two weeks, and I’ve heard a lot of questionnaires. I’m sure you’re no worse than any of the rest of us.’
I was slightly mesmerized by his closeness to me, the heat of his big man’s hand along my sleeve, but I came out of my trance to
protest tearfully. ‘You don’t understand, I’m only here because I thought this kip was a health farm. There’s nothing the matter with me at all!’
I half-expected him to disagree, but he just made general, soothing-type noises, the sort a vet might make to a cow in labour.
I was relieved.
And impressed. So many men go to flustery pieces at a woman’s tears. Which, of course is no bad thing, either. It can be very handy sometimes. But Chris was totally in control.
If he’s this in charge just when I’m crying, what must he be like in bed, I found myself wondering.
‘So what exactly did your boyfriend say?’ Chris asked, hauling my imagination back from where it had been traipsing around in the place where people don’t wear any clothes.
‘Ex-boyfriend,’ I said hastily. Lest there be any confusion.
As I turned my attention to what Luke had said on the form, I suddenly remembered how sweet he once used to be to me. A wave of excruciating nostalgia washed over me and a fresh batch of tears arrived.
‘I’ve only been told about one of the things Luke said,’ I sobbed. ‘And that was a LIE!’
It wasn’t a lie, as such, not technically a lie. But it gave a misleading picture of me, made me sound as if I wasn’t a nice person. So in a way, it was a lie. And best kept from Chris.
‘That’s terrible,’ Chris murmured. ‘Your boyfriend lying about you like that.’
Something in his tone made me suspect he was making fun of me again. But when I shot him a sharp glare, his face was empty and smooth. Back to the crying.
‘Luke Costello is a complete bastard,’ I wept. ‘I must have been out of my mind ever to have gone out with him.’
I turned to put my head down on the table. The move jostled my lycraed thighs against Chris’s denim ones.
Oh, it’s an ill wind…
Chris rubbed my back for a while as I lay bent over the table. I stayed there longer than was strictly necessary because his hand on my bra-fastener felt so nice. When I finally sat up again we had another tantalizing thigh jostle. How fortunate I was wearing such a short skirt.
From the far end of the table, heads looked at us with interest. If Neil didn’t watch himself he was in danger of losing his captive audience. I clenched my teeth and sent powerful thought rays out to all the brown jumpers. Go away. If any of you come near me now, I’ll kill you.
But strangely enough, apart from when Fergus, the acid casualty, passed me down a box of tissues, the others did leave us alone.
Chris made more soothing noises. His attention was calamine lotion on the stings of Luke’s rejection, the antidote to Luke’s poison.
‘I don’t understand why he had to lie to Dr Billings about me,’ I told Chris mournfully. The more of a victim I acted, the better. I’d bind Chris to me with ropes of sympathy.
I was vaguely aware that I’d lost sight of my true pain. Yes, I was devastated at what Luke had said. Not because he was lying about me – because it was true. But I couldn’t tell Chris that. Honesty was a luxury that I couldn’t afford.
Instead I tailored my pain in the hope of making Chris like me. Brave heroine remains dignified, although baffled by cruel boyfriend’s lies, that kind of thing.
‘What exactly did Luke say?’ Chris asked.
‘I’m so unlucky,’ I said, sidestepping his question. A new crop of tears arrived. ‘Nothing but bad things ever seem to happen to me. Do you know what I mean?’
Chris nodded, and his face was grim, in a way that made me nervous. Had I annoyed him?
At the moment I became convinced he knew I’d made it up about Luke lying, Chris suddenly pulled his chair closer to me. I jumped from both the abrupt movement and my own guilty fear. He’d moved so close his right thigh was wedged between both of mine. Practically up under my skirt, I noted with alarm. What was he doing?
I followed his movements with fear as he brought his hand to my face and lay his fingers along my jawbone. Was he going to hit me? For a second that stretched on for hours my face rested in the cradle of his hand. Or was he going to kiss me? When he moved his face nearer and it seemed that he was, I went into a mad panic about how we could do it without the tableful of brown jumpers seeing us. But he neither hit nor kissed me. Instead he moved his thumb along my cheek and rubbed away one of my tears. It was done efficiently but with strange tenderness.
‘Poor Rachel,’ he said, doing the other tear with his other thumb. There was no mistaking the compassion in his voice. Passion, even? Maybe…
‘Poor Rachel,’ he said again. But even as he did so, Misty O’Malley brushed past us and, to my great surprise, I heard her laugh. She wasn’t supposed to laugh. Everyone was supposed to feel sorry for me.
Poor me! Chris had said so.
She eyed me, an expression of excoriating scorn on her green-eyed little face. As I filled with rage and hard-done-by-ness, I looked at Chris, ready to take my cue from him. When he compressed his beautiful mouth, I eagerly waited for him to say ‘Shut up, Misty, you little bitch.’ But he didn’t, he said nothing at all. And neither, reluctantly, did I.
Misty swaggered away and, without meeting my eyes, Chris slowly and thoughtfully said ‘I’ve a suggestion to make.’
One involving me, him, no clothes and a condom? I wondered hopefully.
‘You mightn’t like it,’ he warned.
He didn’t want to wear a condom? OK, we could sort something else out.
‘I know you feel lousy now,’ he said carefully. ‘You’re hurt. But maybe you owe it to yourself to have a think about what this Luke said, because you might find that it isn’t actually a lie at all…’
I stared at him open-mouthed, while inside me a voice whimpered I thought you were my friend. He stared back, deepest sympathy in his eyes.
What was going on?
Just then Misty O’Malley marched back into the room and said ‘I need a big, strong man.’ As the stampede of middle-aged porkers began, like feeding-time in the pigsty, she held up her hand and said ‘But, in the absence of that, you’ll have to do.’ She reached out, gave me a special all-of-my-own smirk that no one else could see, and grabbed Chris by his hand.
He went! He stood up, brushed past my knees, sending a brief tingle through me, said ‘I’ll catch up with you later,’ then left.
I almost burst into tears again. I hated Misty O’Malley for her ability to make me feel like the village idiot. I hated Chris for choosing Misty over me. Worse again, I was mortified beyond belief that Chris had known I was lying about Luke. And what I really didn’t understand was why he was so nice about it.
But when the other inmates came to talk to me I realized I might as well be honest about what Luke had written. It wasn’t as if it was even that bad, I reminded myself.
First to arrive at my side was Mike who, like Chris, knew before I told him that a questionnaire had arrived.
‘S’obvious.’ He grinned, puffing out his barrel chest. ‘When you’ve been here three weeks you’ll know the signs. Anyway, what did me-laddo have to say for himself?’
‘He said that I sometimes took cocaine in the mornings before going to work.’ As I said it out loud for the first time, the impact of Luke’s treachery hit me with renewed force. Bitter rage at his betrayal of me welled up.
‘And did you?’ Mike asked.
The word ‘No’ hovered on my mouth, but I forced myself to swallow it.
‘Now and then,’ I said impatiently, annoyed at having to explain such things to this unsophisticated farmer.
‘It’s no big deal,’ I said hotly. ‘Lots of people do it in New York, it’s different from here, you see. Highly pressured. It’s no different from having a cup of coffee in the mornings. You wouldn’t understand.’
Bit by bit, Neil lost the ratings war as the inmates flocked to my side. I took advantage of each new arrival to voice my grievances afresh.
I wanted soothing hands laid on my fevered feelings. And, because Luke had made me feel so worthless, I
wanted to even up the balance by reducing him to nothingness.
The inmates didn’t have Celine’s objections to tearing Luke apart. And they joined in with stories of their own, ‘Great questionnaires I have known’. We gorged ourselves on terrible tales of bastard friends and relations who had stabbed us in the back in many a Cloisters’ questionnaire. I almost enjoyed myself. I didn’t mind making common cause with the others because I needed someone to talk to, even if we were as similar as people from different planets. Sitting in the thick of a tableful of people who had nothing but sympathy and bars of chocolate for me was nice.
Several people offered to beat Luke up. Which touched me deeply. Especially as one of them was Chaquie.
They were more than happy to believe every terrible thing I told them about Luke. Except, of course, for the bit about the blind man’s fiddle. But I smoothed over it and soon we were back to dishing Luke’s dirt.
‘Luke Costello couldn’t tell the truth about anything!’ I declared. ‘You know, he’d lie if you asked him his favourite colour.’
The more I blackened his name, the better I felt. By the end I really did believe he was as awful as I professed.
Chris didn’t reappear. I kept watching the door wondering where he was gone with Misty. And what they were doing.
Fuckers.
But I didn’t have a chance to become morose because Mike and the gang were very interested in the high-pressured life I lived in New York.
‘And would you be very busy at work?’ Eddie asked. They all moved closer to me, their eyes bright with interest.
‘You wouldn’t believe it,’ I told them. ‘Eighteen-hour days wouldn’t be unusual. And you could lose your job like THAT.’ I snapped my fingers to demonstrate how easy it was. ‘And there’s no dole in New York.’
They oooohhhed with shock.
‘You could end up on the streets in a matter of days,’ I said darkly. ‘And it’s much colder in New York than it is here.’
‘Colder than Leitrim?’ asked Clarence.
‘Much colder.’
‘Colder than Cork?’ asked Don.
