Remind Me Again Why I Need a Man

by Claudia Carroll

  Another great font of gossip for the office. I playfully pretend to hit him across the head with the flowers and they all laugh.

  ‘Come on then, babes, let’s leave them all guessing and let me take you to dinner,’ he says, grabbing my hand. ‘Catch you later.’ He winks at Suzy on our way out. She grins back at him, bats the eyelids and gives me a huge thumbs-up sign the minute his back is turned. But then Jack’s been provoking that kind of reaction in women since he was about six.

  Work is forgotten about and Celtic Tigers could go down the toilet in the morning for all I care, I’m so ecstatic as I swan out of the office, roses in one hand, Jack Keating in the other.

  Once in a while good things do happen.

  He takes me to Peploe’s, an über-trendy restaurant in town, the kind of place you practically have to give a blood sample just to get a table. In spite of all my feeble protests about our not having a reservation, Jack just does his thing. He makes a beeline for the hostess on duty, releases the full megawatt force of the Jack Keating charm offensive and, within ten minutes, we’re sitting at the best table in the house. The King of Spain could have been left standing at the bar moaning to Pope Benedict about how long the wait is for a table, but not my Jack.

  As we’re glancing at our menus, I realize that it’s imperative that I keep my head and not get drunk and, most importantly of all, not refer to my by now infamous email. There’s no point in my continuously blaming myself, not when I can just blame myself once and move on.

  Baby steps. First of all, I need to find out if he’s single.

  I decide what I’m ordering, put the menu down and smile at him with what I hope is an inscrutable mask.

  But Jack knows me far too well. ‘Are you OK?’ he asks.

  ‘Of course I am. Why?’

  ‘You have a very pained-looking expression. You don’t need to run to the loo or anything, do you?’

  ‘Ehh, no. Definitely not.’ Shit. So much for my inscrutable mask.

  ‘OK, what do you say we cut to the chase here?’ He smiles. ‘It’s kind of like there’s a big pink elephant in the middle of the room that we’re both ignoring. Why don’t we just get the awkward bit out of the way and then I can go back to having a good night out with my old pal Amelia. What do you say?’

  I smile up at him, kind of relieved, although I do think: Did he just say old pal? This does not augur well …

  Then comes the sentence I’ve been dreading.

  ‘OK, bull-by-the-horns time,’ Jack begins. ‘I read your email with great interest. After I’d picked myself up off the floor, that is.’

  I cover my face with my hands, mortified, but at least now it’s out in the open. ‘Do I need a brandy in my hand for what’s coming?’ I ask, half-messing, half-serious.

  ‘The thing is,’ he says, lowering his voice so that I have to lean forward to hear him. ‘I’ve thought about you a lot. About our friendship, I mean. You know how it is with me, Amelia, women come and go but you’re always there. You’re a constant in my life and I love that.’

  OK, I think, so far so good …

  ‘And of course I remembered our pact. Here we both are, late thirties and still unmarried. So …’

  ‘So?’

  I have to take a very deep breath and an equally big slug of wine. Not to over-dramatize things or anything, but the next sentence out of him could change the entire course of my life.

  Jack, however, doesn’t seem to have a nerve in his body. In fact, the waitress (who, by the way, is very pretty) comes over with the wine list just at that point and he automatically starts flirting with her. She falls for it and flirts right back and I almost feel sorry for her, because I’m thinking: You think he means it but he doesn’t. This is just the way he communicates with all women. He can’t help himself, it’s practically encoded in his DNA.

  Then I have a flash forward …

  TIME: The not-too-distant future. I hope …

  THE PLACE: The National Maternity Hospital, Holles Street, Dublin.

  THE OCCASION: I’m in the delivery ward, legs in stirrups, about to give birth to my first-born.

  ‘Come on, Mrs Keating,’ the midwife is barking at me, ‘nearly there. One big push and it’ll all be over.’

  ‘Aghhhhhhhhhhhhhh! I can’t do this!’ I’m screeching at the top of my voice. ‘More drugs, gimme more drugs!’

  ‘You can have one more mouthful of gas, Amelia,’ says my gynaecologist from underneath the greeny-coloured sheet thing that’s covering my modesty. ‘But that’s your lot, I’m afraid. You’ve had quite enough. I don’t want the baby coming out stoned.’

  ‘Bastard! Is there anyone with a uterus in this room who will find a vein and help me?’ I scream at him viciously (mainly because, in my head, he looks an awful lot like my old headmaster in school, who I hated). ‘Spinal tap me now!’ I snarl. ‘I don’t care if I give birth to Jimi Hendrix! I need maximum-dosage pain relief.’

  ‘Baby’s crowning,’ says my headmaster, sorry, I mean gynaecologist. ‘Quick, get the husband.’

  But Jack isn’t at my side, mopping my fevered brow and saying things like, ‘There, there now, darling, you still look beautiful to me,’ as fathers-to-be are supposed to … he’s in the corner, chatting up the very pretty nurse.

  In my fantasy/nightmare, she’s like a Benny Hill caricature, all tits and ass and lip gloss, giggling at Jack’s jokes and pointing her boobs in his face.

  ‘Yeah, I’ve always had a thing about nurses’ uniforms,’ he’s saying, totally ignoring my wails from the bedside. ‘Very, very sexy. Where did you say you were from again? Tipperary? Fabulous accent, I just love it. So what time does your shift finish at?’

  ‘South Tipperary, actually,’ she giggles inanely. ‘So, are you ready to order yet or would you and your girlfriend like a bit more time?’

  What! Oh yeah. Reality. Sorry about that.

  ‘Oh, and by the way, the special tonight is grilled guinea fowl with spinach purée and a tarragon-butter sauce. It’s really delish.’ The waitress licks her lips a bit and looks coyly at Jack as if to say, ‘You’re really delish.’

  ‘Great, thanks,’ says Jack, looking up at her all twinkly-eyed. ‘Oh, and FYI?’ he winks after her. ‘She’s not my girlfriend.’

  OK. It’s not very often I get reality checks, but here comes a biggie …

  I can’t do it. I can’t. I couldn’t marry Jack even if he loved me romantically, which he doesn’t. I’d never be happy. I just know I wouldn’t. I love him dearly and I know he loves me too but neither of us is in love with the other and there’s a very good chance we could end up ruining a fantastic, lifelong friendship.

  In the end, we both say it at exactly the same time.

  ‘We’re better off as friends.’

  Then we burst out laughing and, all of a sudden, we’re back to being the old Jack and Amelia, pre-pact. Having fun. Loving each other’s company. Buddies.

  Hours later, as we’re drunkenly pouring ourselves into a taxi outside Lillie’s Bordello, Jack suddenly goes all quiet on me.

  ‘What’s up?’ I ask, sensing the change in his mood. ‘Are you worried that you haven’t collected enough girls’ phone numbers for one night, is that it, Mr Lothario?’

  ‘No,’ he says, mock serious. ‘I just had an idea.’

  ‘Whassssssup?’

  ‘Here we both are, late thirties and single. What do you say we make a fresh, brand-new, revised pact? If we’re both forty-five and still single, we get married, you and me. Good plan?’

  I don’t even answer him. I just pretend to smack him on the back of his head with the flowers he gave me and we both collapse in a drunken, hysterical fit of giggles.

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  A Very Twentieth-century Way of Being Dumped

  You might not have thought so, but after years and years of getting out there, getting rejected, getting up off the ground and going out there again, eventually, the unthinkable happened.

  Jamie got
a job.

  A proper one, in a proper, posh ‘frock’ show.

  It’s the stage adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice and he’s been cast as Mr Collins, the slightly ridiculous rector who wants to marry the heroine, Lizzy Bennet, but has to make do with her best friend Charlotte Lucas instead. It’s the Christmas show at Dublin’s prestigious Gate Theatre, all set to open on 1 December 1994.

  Two things about Jamie, however. One, he decided it would make him far too nervous to have all us Lovely Girls sitting pretty in the front row on his opening night, so he asked us to come to his first preview instead. ‘And I’ll do my best to make you all proud,’ he said. ‘Or, at least, less ashamed.’

  ‘You’re going to be wonderful in the part,’ I said to him at the time, bursting with pride. ‘I’ve never seen you work so hard.’

  ‘You’ve never seen me work, full stop.’

  Secondly and more importantly, Jamie has officially ‘come out’. This is after weeks/months/years of him dragging us all into gay haunts and then strenuously denying that there was any ulterior motive.

  ‘No, darlings,’ he’d protest, ‘it’s just that you haven’t lived until you’ve been to Sunday afternoon bingo in the George pub. Especially when Miss Panti is the hostess.’

  In due course, the inevitable came to pass. ‘You’ll all be deeply shocked to know that … drum roll, pause for dramatic effect … yes! I’m out!’ was his way of breaking the news to us. ‘I know it’s a tired old cliché, I went into showbiz and found love in my own locker room, but hey! Welcome to the theatre!’

  So Caroline and I dutifully trooped along to the Gate, minus Rachel who’s living in Paris by now, but who has sent the biggest bouquet of flowers you ever saw, along with a bottle of champagne to toast Jamie’s success and to mark the launch of what we all hope will be a glittering career. His name in lights, fantastic reviews, agents bickering over him and all of his performances making the news, just like when Laurence Olivier started out.

  But life isn’t like that, is it?

  He made his grand entrance in the third scene, where all the cast dance a quadrille at the Nether-field ball. Caroline and I both collectively held our breath as an invisible string quartet struck up and … disaster.

  Jamie, clad in heeled Regency buckle shoes that he wasn’t quite used to, went to do a very fancy-looking twirl (think Nureyev meets Nijinsky) and fell over, dragging both Lydia Bennet and Caroline Bingley all the way down as far as the footlights with him.

  He got into the papers all right, but just not in the ‘review’ section.

  ACTOR’S UNLUCKY BREAK

  James French, making his debut at Dublin’s Gate Theatre last night, suffered an onstage fall which brought the show to a complete halt. An under-study will take over the role for opening night as Mr French recovers in hospital from a fractured ankle and two cracked ribs.

  Which brings me neatly to ex-boyfriend number eight on my hit list. Or, as I like to call him, Mr Non-Closure …

  And I wouldn’t mind, but it all started out so romantically …

  THE TIME: The curtain went up at eight p.m. and barely one hour later, we’re all in the Accident and Emergency department.

  THE PLACE: Saint Vincent’s Hospital, Dublin.

  THE OCCASION: Caroline and I are both nervously clustered around the tiny little bed that they’ve put Jamie in, when suddenly a curtain swishes back and into the cubicle walks Johnny …

  OK. His proper name is Johnny Allen. Dr Johnny Allen to be precise. Tall, broad, prematurely balding and newly qualified as a junior doctor; he looks like a younger version of Kelsey Grammer crossed with the toothiness of a Kennedy brother. He bounds in, full of energy and not at all like someone who’s been working a one-hundred-hour week and functioning on next to no sleep.

  We start flirting immediately.

  ‘OK, Jamie,’ he says cheerfully, ‘good news and bad news. Which do you want first?’

  ‘You mean there’s good news?’ Jamie snarls from the bed as Caroline and I do our best to calm him down. ‘The only positive outcome to this is if my agent comes around that curtain right now to say either that Pride and Prejudice can go ahead with Mr Collins on crutches, or that there’s a load of interesting offers in for an actor in a wheelchair. All the parts that Daniel Day-Lewis turned down,’ he almost wails, bitterly disappointed and in acute pain.

  ‘No, sorry, not quite what I was getting at,’ says Johnny, sounding a tad hesitant, as would anyone who wasn’t used to Jamie’s hissy fits. ‘The good news is that I’m letting you go home, but the bad news is we’re going to have to put you in plaster for at least six weeks. No opening night for you, I’m afraid.’

  ‘You have to be kidding me! I can’t believe that I’ve gone almost three minutes without saying “Bastard bloody universe! Why me?” ’ Jamie continues to screech.

  Now, Caroline in her infinite wisdom is always lecturing me that there are five distinct categories whereby it’s possible for me to meet men. We even have them categorized, a bit like the way they classify hurricanes in the States.

  Category 1: Your friends and, by extension, your friends’ friends. OK, at this point, we’re almost into 1995 and I’ve still had no joy here …

  Category 2: Work. I’ve just started working as an investigative journalist for the Irish Record. It’s a fab job and I absolutely love it, it’s just that there’s a downside. The only eligible men I’m meeting through work these days are either drug barons, crime lords or gangland criminals. Not exactly what you might call suitable husband material …

  Category 3: Socializing. Clubs, pubs, you name it, I’ve been trawling through them all and here I am, twenty-six years of age and no sign of Mr Right. Caroline is engaged now and is sporting a rock on her finger bigger than the Hope diamond and while there’s nobody happier for her than I am, I just wish it was my turn.

  Yes, I want to have a successful career. Yes, I want to work in television, the Holy Grail. I would just like to get married first, that’s all …

  Category 4: Activities and hobbies. I regularly go to the theatre and the movies but still no joy. I know this is a numbers game and that you have to go to every dog fight you’re invited to and I do, I really do.

  Anyway I’m not actively looking to find my man when I’m on a night out with my friends … mainly because everyone says this is the surest way to meet someone. I.e., by not looking.

  Category 5: Accident. Let me explain. When Caroline first mooted this to me, I presumed she meant if you spot a guy you fancy, you should reverse your car into his – that type of accident. But no. This category effectively covers those rare and wondrous occasions when you meet someone unexpectedly, unplanned, out of nowhere.

  She catches my eye from the other side of the bed and silently mouths ‘Cat. five’.

  Hint taken.

  I flick into full flirtation mode.

  ‘Sorry about this, doctor,’ I say, gazing into his lovely blue eyes, ‘it’s just that this was a really big career opportunity for Jamie. Do you ever go to the theatre? Tonight’s show looked really interesting – well, the ten minutes of it that we saw. It’s just that if you wanted to come with us when we go back …’

  ‘Ughhh!’ groans Jamie from the bed. ‘Heterosexual politics, thank God I’m out of that arena. Look, Dr Whatever-your-name-is, she’s single. She’s not bad to look at. From her demented ramblings I’m guessing she wouldn’t mind seeing you outside of this public-health hell-hole. Have you the slightest interest?’

  I glare at Jamie thunderously. ‘Remind me again which is the bad leg?’ I ask him. ‘Just so I can bang my handbag down on it?’

  ‘Sorry, I’m just trying to save both of you a lot of time.’

  ‘Now, now, Jamie,’ says Caroline, ‘don’t take it out on Amelia just because she’s able-bodied.’

  Dr Johnny, however, spares my blushes. ‘Sounds great. I’d love to take you out,’ he says simply.

  ‘Good. Just don’t think of goin
g to see Pride and Prejudice, that’s all,’ says Jamie warningly. ‘If you value my friendship, you’ll boycott all theatre until I’m back in the game.’

  ‘How about a film?’ Caroline tactfully suggests, bless her.

  ‘Sounds good to me,’ says Johnny. ‘The last movie I saw was a colonoscopy.’

  And thus it came to pass …

  THE TIME: Flash forward to about six months later, June 1995.

  THE PLACE: The townhouse I’m still sharing with Caroline and Jamie. Well, until Caroline gets married, at least.

  THE OCCASION: Rachel’s home for the weekend from Paris, where she now lives with Christian, and she and I are having a night in to catch up on each other’s lives. Caroline’s out with Mike’s family, Jamie’s on a date and this is the first time I’ve actually had Rachel all to myself. After a bottle of wine, I blurt out the whole, sad tale of me and Dr Johnny …

  Ten p.m. ‘Right, now that the other two are out of the way, tell me honestly,’ Rachel asks me as she lights a fag and takes a deep drag, ‘when was the last time he called?’

  ‘Let’s see now,’ I say, topping up our wine glasses. ‘This is Friday, so … emm … it would have been … almost three weeks ago.’

  ‘And no row? No other woman on the scene? No signs that this was coming? No reason for this?’

  ‘No, that’s what has me on the verge of turning into a stalker. Everything was going really well. He treated me well, took me out to lovely places, I got on with all his friends, he got on with Caroline and Jamie. Then, about three weeks ago, he took me to see Braveheart, dropped me back here, stayed over, went to work the next morning, said he’d call and then … big, fat nothing.’

  ‘That has to be the world’s greatest lie: “I’ll call you.” ’

  ‘No, the world’s greatest lie is “You know I love you.” ’

  ‘Whatever. He’s a bastard. If Christian dropped me without having the balls to say it to my face, I swear on his future grave I’d rip out his goolies.’ Then she clocks the hurt look on my face. ‘Sorry, darling. Are you not ready for me to start slagging him off? Give me the nod as soon as you are. I’m your girl.’