by Marian Keyes
‘You’ve had what, viewed from the outside, at least, seems like a very lonely life. Would you agree with that?’
‘I suppose,’ he mumbled obligingly.
‘Why didn’t you ever marry?’ she asked, as she had asked on Friday.
He looked bewildered, as if he really hadn’t a clue. ‘Maybe, er… you know, the right woman didn’t happen along?’ He attempted bravely.
‘Is that what you really think, John Joe?’ she asked with a horrible smirk.
He let his hands fall in a gesture of helplessness. ‘’Tis, I suppose.’
‘I don’t think so, John Joe,’ she said. ‘Now, I asked you on Friday if you had ever lost your virginity. Are you prepared to answer that?’
He just looked at his boots, not even peeping up from under his bushy eyebrows.
It was clear that Josephine wasn’t going to have the same kind of success with John Joe that she’d enjoyed the previous day with Neil. I suspected that there wasn’t anything to discover about John Joe.
Wrong.
‘Tell me about your childhood,’ she suggested cheerfully.
Jaysus, I thought, what a cliché.
John Joe looked blank.
‘What was your father like?’ she asked.
‘Ahhh,’tis a long time since he kicked the bucket…’
‘Tell us what you remember,’ she said firmly. ‘What did he look like?’
‘A fine big man,’ he said slowly. ‘As tall as the dresser. And he could carry a bullock under each oxter.’
‘What’s your earliest memory of him?’
John Joe thought long and hard, staring far back into the past.
I was very surprised when he actually began to speak.
‘I was a gossur of three or four,’ he said. ‘It must have been September, because the hay was in, and standing in little ricks in the field below, and there was the harvest smell in the air. I was making sport on the flagstones, firing a stick around, with one of the pigs.’
I listened in amazement at John Joe’s lyrical description. Who would have thought he had it in him?
‘And for a bit of crack, I got the notion in me head to land the pig a belt of the stick. So I did and, didn’t I get the suck-in when I kilt it shtone dead…’
And who would have thought this frail old man had it in him to kill a pig?
‘PJ started crying like a woman and went running in, “You’re after killing the pig, I’m going to tell Dada on you”…’
‘Who’s PJ?’ Josephine asked.
‘The brother.’
‘And were you frightened?’
‘I suppose I was. I suppose I knew ’twasn’t advisable to be going round killing pigs. But when Dada came out, he took a look and the next thing, he’s scarthing laughing and says “By the living jingo, but it takes a big man to kill a pig!”’
‘So your father wasn’t angry?’
‘No, indeed he was not. He was proud of me.’
‘Did you like it when your father was proud of you?’
‘I did. ‘Twas powerful.’
John Joe was positively animated.
I reluctantly began to admire Josephine, she certainly knew what people’s triggers were. Even if I wasn’t sure where she was going with this John Joe/father thing.
‘Give me one word to describe how your father made you feel,’ she told him. ‘It can be anything. Happy, sad, weak, clever, strong, stupid, anything at all. Think about it for a few minutes.’
John Joe thought long and hard, breathing through his mouth in a very annoying fashion.
Finally he spoke. ‘Safe,’ he said firmly.
‘You’re sure?’
He nodded.
Josephine seemed pleased.
‘Now, you referred to PJ “crying like a woman”,’ she said. ‘That sounds quite contemptuous of women. What I mean is, it sounds like you haven’t much resp…’
‘I know what contemptuous means,’ John Joe interrupted. His slow, heavy voice carried pride and irritation.
I could feel the rest of us sit up in our chairs in surprise.
‘Are you contemptuous of women?’ she asked.
‘I am!’ He astonished us all by answering immediately. ‘With their whingeing and their crying, always needing to be minded.’
‘Hmmm.’ A knowing smile played on Josephine’s un-lipsticked mouth. ‘And who does the minding?’
‘Men do.’
‘Why’s that?’
‘Because men are strong. Men have to mind the others.’ ‘But you’re in a difficult position, aren’t you, John Joe?’ she asked, a strange light gleaming in her eyes.’ Because even though you’re a man, and supposed to do the minding, you like to be minded yourself. You like to feel safe.’ He nodded warily.
‘But women can’t take care of you, that’s what you think. To be properly safe a man would have to take care of you.’
For a few moments she let all kinds of questions and answers hang in the air.
What’s she getting at? I wondered frantically. Surely, she couldn’t mean…? She wasn’t implying…? That John Joe is…?
‘Gay.’
‘Or “homosexual” is a word you may be more familiar with,’ she said briskly.
John Joe’s face had gone grey. But, as I watched in jaw-dropped amazement, there wasn’t the flurry of furious, drooling denial that I expected. (‘Who are you calling queer? Just because you’re an oul’ dyke of a nun who hasn’t ever seen hide nor hair of a man’s naked lad…’ etc., etc.)
John Joe looked resigned, more than anything else. ‘You knew this about yourself, didn’t you?’ Josephine looked closely at him.
To my further astonishment John Joe shrugged wearily and said ‘Yerra, I did and I didn’t. What good would it done me?’
‘You could have become a priest,’ I almost said,’ and had your pick of the boys.’
‘You’re sixty-six years of age,’ Josephine said. ‘What a very lonely life you must have had until now.’
He looked exhausted and heartbroken.
‘It’s about time you started to live your life properly and honesdy,’ she went on.
‘It’s too late,’ he said heavily.
‘No, it’s not,’ Josephine said.
Visions of John Joe swapping his antique, black, shiny suit for 501s, a white T-shirt and a shaved head swam before me. Or John Joe in a check shirt, leather chaps and a handlebar moustache having exchanged milking cows for dancing to The Village People and The Communards.
‘John Joe,’ Josephine said, in a return to schoolmarm fashion,’understand one thing. You’re as sick as your secrets; as long as you live a lie, you will continue to drink. And if you continue to drink you will die. Soon.’
Scary stuff.
‘There’s a lot of work to be done, John Joe, on how you’ve lived your life, but we’ve broken through a big barrier here today. Stay with the feelings.
‘And as for the rest of you, I know not all of you are latent homosexuals or lesbians. But don’t think that just because you’re not, that you can’t still be alcoholics and addicts.’
Later that day a new inmate arrived. I first got wind of it when Chaquie rushed into the dining-room after lunch and screeched ‘We’ve a new girl! I saw her when I was doing the hoovering.’
I wasn’t happy when I heard the new arrival was a girl. I had competition enough from Misty O’Bloody Malley for Chris’s attention.
Luckily the new girl was possibly the fattest woman I’d ever seen in real life. I’d seen some people as ginormous as her on Geraldo but I didn’t believe they actually existed. She was sitting in the dining-room when we returned from afternoon group. Dr Billings introduced her as Angela, then went off.
Chris sidled up to me.
My heart leapt, then he said ‘Rachel, why don’t you go and talk to Angela?’
‘Me?’ I said. ‘Why me?’
‘Why not? Go on,’ he urged. ‘She’ll probably be more comfortable talking to women just now.
Go on. Remember how frightened you were on your first day.’
I started to say ‘But it was different for me,’ but I wanted to please him. So I stuck a smile on and went over to her. Mike joined me and we attempted to have a chat.
Neither of us asked her what she was in for, although we suspected it might have something to do with food and eating too much of it.
She looked scared and miserable and I found myself saying ‘Don’t worry, my first day was awful but it gets better,’ even though I didn’t mean it.
Don and Eddie were shouting at each other across the table because Don had spilt a drop of tea on Eddie’s paper. Eddie was insisting that Don pay for a new one but Don was adamantly insisting that he wouldn’t. I knew how harmless the row was, but Angela looked horrified by it. So Mike and I tried to cheer her up about it.
‘Eddie’s furious.’ I laughed. ‘Although a fat lot of… er… good it’ll do him.’
As I said ‘fat’ I found that I’d made eye-contact with Angela and the moment went on for ever. I hated myself. I was always putting my foot in things. Always.
‘But Don’s such a little Hitler, it’s about time someone cut him down to…’ Mike froze, then forced himself to finish, ‘size,’ he muttered.
‘It’s only a newspaper, after all,’ I said, with forced jollity. ‘Not some huge, weighty matter. It’s no big deal.’ To my horror,’ weighty’ and ‘big’ came out much louder than I had intended.
I could feel beads of sweat on my upper lip.
Did I see Angela flinch?
Then Fergus, who had been trying to adjudicate the Don/Eddie scrap, lurched over to us.
‘How’s it goin’?’ He nodded at Angela and sat down.
‘Man.’ He shook his head in disbelief. ‘Really heavy.’
We all tensed. Rigor mortis nearly set in.
‘Don and Eddie, do you mean?’ I asked, anxiously trying to smooth things over.
‘Yeah,’ sighed oblivious Fergus. ‘Like Eddie really thinks he’ll get money out of Don? FAT CHANCE.’
‘You’d think Don would display a little… largesse…’ I faltered. ‘I mean, generosity.’
I was sweating buckets by then.
‘It’s a huge waste,’ Eddie shouted at Don. To Mike and me, it sounded more like ‘HUGE WAIST’.
‘Oh look,’ Stalin shouted. ‘Look at the BIG ARSE… Mumble, mumble.’
It transpired he was looking at the football pages and Arsenal had had a big win, but it didn’t sound like that.
I was a limp rag.
Next, Peter came over and sat down with us. I breathed a huge sigh of relief.
‘Hello,’ he said to Angela, ‘I’m Peter.’
‘Angela.’ She smiled nervously.
‘Well,’ he barked with a fake laugh, ‘there’s no need to ask you why you’re here.’
I nearly passed out.
‘Maybe Angela and Eamonn will fall in love,’ Don suggested later, his hands clasped, his eyes aglow. ‘Wouldn’t that be lovely? And they’d have lots of lovely, bouncing babies.’
‘You can’t say that,’ tutted Vincent.
‘Why not?’ Don demanded. ‘Didn’t Liz Taylor and Larry Foreskinsky meet at a treatment centre? Love stories can happen, dreams can come true.’
I wondered if Don’s homosexuality was still too latent for him to have discovered Judy Garland. If so, I really must bring her to his attention.
Twice a day, for the rest of the week, I sweated terror-stricken buckets in case Josephine read out the questionnaire in group. But she didn’t and I tentatively began to hope that she mightn’t at all. Despite being saved, it didn’t stop me from completely burning up whenever I thought of Luke. Which was most of the time. I lurched from boiling rage where I planned terrible vengeance to whimpering confusion as I wondered why he’d been so cruel to me.
Being with the other inmates gave me a strange, unexpected comfort. They were nearly all wildly enthusiastic in their condemnation of Luke and very affectionate to me.
However, I liked to think that whenever Chris hugged me it meant more. Because we weren’t in the same group, I only saw him at meal times and in the evenings. But he always took care to come and sit beside me after dinner. I looked forward to seeing him, to us having a special, private little chat. At times, I was almost able to convince myself that being trapped in the Cloisters wasn’t an entirely bad thing. Such close proximity to each other was bound to help our budding relationship along.
The week carried on.
On Wednesday, Chaquie read her life story, which was mild and tame.
On Thursday, one of Clarence’s brothers came as his Involved Significant Other but, as Clarence was no longer in denial about his alcoholism, there were no surprises. In fact, Clarence kept beating his brother to the punchlines of each horror story.
On Friday, Neil’s girlfriend, Mandy, came. For some reason I had expected a dolly-bird in a short skirt and heavy eyeliner. But Mandy could have been Emer’s older, dowdier sister. It seemed to me that Neil was looking for a mother-figure. Mandy confirmed what everyone already knew. That Neil drank an awful lot and was fond of giving his women a slap and breaking the occasional bone.
Thursday night was Narcotics Anonymous night.
When I’d looked at the notice board the first day, there had seemed to be millions of meetings. But in actuality there was only one a week. As it was my first meeting, I was curious. Almost excited. But it was just mad stuff.
What happened was, me, Vincent, Chris, Fergus, Nancy the housewife, Neil and two or three others trooped off to the Library. Where a beautiful, blonde woman with a Cork accent sat with us and tried to pretend that she’d been a heroin addict until seven years before.
She was called Nola, at least that’s what she said her name was. But she was so poised and glamorous that just by looking at her I could tell she’d never had a day’s debauchery in her life. She must have been an actress that the Cloisters used to try and convince the druggies that they could get better. But she didn’t fool me.
She asked me if I’d like to say anything and, startled, I mumbled that I wouldn’t. I was afraid she’d be cross with me. But she gave me such a beautiful dazzling smile that I wanted to climb into her pocket and stay with her. I thought she was gorgeous.
Two nice things happened that week, in the midst of my Luke-induced rage and confusion. First, I came to the end of my week on breakfasts and was now on Clarence’s lunch team, which meant lie-ins and no eggs. Secondly, I was weighed by Margot, one of the nurses, and I was under eight-and-a-half stone, which I had fantasized about for most of my life.
But when she said ‘Good, you’ve put on a couple of pounds,’ I was mystified.
‘Since when?’ I asked.
‘Since the day you arrived.’
‘How do you know how heavy I was then?’
‘Because we weighed you.’ She looked interested and pulled a white card towards her. ‘Don’t you remember?’
‘No.’ I was really puzzled.
‘Not to worry,’ she smiled, writing on the card. ‘Most people are in such a chemical fog the day they arrive here that they don’t know which end is up. It takes a while for the mists to clear.’
‘Haven’t the others been commenting on how thin you are?’ she asked.
They had, at times. How had she known?
‘Yes,’ I faltered,’ but I didn’t believe them, I just thought because they were farmers and the like, they wanted a fine hoult of a woman, as they say, with calf-bearing hips and the strength to walk four miles with a sheep under each arm and cook up a field full of spuds for the tea each evening and…’
You couldn’t make a joke about anything. As I said all that, Margot wrote furiously on the white card.
‘It’s a joke,’ I said scornfully, and looked meaningfully at the card.
Margot smiled conspiratorially at me. ‘Rachel, even jokes tell us plenty.’
There was no full-length mirror for me to verify Margot’s
findings against. But as I tentatively felt my hipbones and ribs I realized I must have lost weight – the hipbones hadn’t been so clear of blubber since I was ten. While this truly elated me, I had no idea how it had happened. Years of attendance at the gym hadn’t made any impact before. Maybe I had been lucky enough to come by a tapeworm.
One thing was for sure, though, I promised fiercely, now that I had lost it, I was determined not to put it on again. No more Pringles, no more biscuits, no more eating between meals. No more eating at meals, for that matter. That should take care of things.
And before I knew it, we had reached the end of the week, raced through the cookery class and games of Saturday, and suddenly it was Sunday again.
32
On this Sunday, I was allowed visitors. What I was hoping was that Anna would come to visit with a narcotic or two about her person. I was no longer worried about drugs showing up in a random blood test. On the contrary, if they threw me out I’d be delighted.
In the unpleasant event of Anna not coming, I had a letter already written for her, for Dad or someone to ferry back, requesting that she hotfoot it out to Wicklow with a bag of drugs under her oxter for me.
While I was looking forward to some visitors, I was worried about a couple of things. First I was dreading the great mirth that would issue forth from Helen when she learned that there was no gym, swimming pool or massages. And that there were no celebrities currently in residence.
But, worse than that, I was afraid of my mother. I was dreading seeing her disappointed, martyred eyes.
Maybe she won’t come, I thought. There was a brief flare of hope before I realized that if she didn’t come, it would be far worse than if she did.
Finally, my nerves stretched to screaming point, I saw our car turn into the drive. I could hardly believe it when I saw Mum sitting in the front seat beside Dad. I would have expected her to be lying in the back covered by a blanket in case someone saw her and put two and two together. But instead there she was as bold as brass, sitting upright, without even dark glasses, a balaclava or a wide-brimmed hat. My spirits rallied until I noticed I could only see one person in the back of the car. I prayed for it to be Anna. Anna and lots of drugs.
