The Bright Side

by Alex Coleman

  “Well, I hope you’re happy now,” he began.

  “Hello, Robert,” I said. “Are you all right? Has something happened?”

  He snorted. “What, you can’t guess? Go on. Have a go. Something that would make me miserable and make you happy.” There was something odd about his speech. It took me a moment to realise what was causing it. “Good God,” I said.

  “Are you drunk? At this hour?”

  He snorted again, less convincingly this time. “I was drunk last night, if that’s what you mean.”

  My talentless hairdresser popped into my head again. I shooed her away. “Have you been to bed?”

  “Never mind the questions. Are you going to guess or –” “Just tell me, Robert, for Christ’s sake, I’m not in the mood for games. I’m starting to get –”

  “It’s Jemima. She’s fucking dumped me.”

  I didn’t reply for a second, hoping the delay would make me sound appalled and saddened. “Oh. I’m sorry to hear that! When d–”

  “Don’t give me that. Don’t give me sorry. You’re only delighted. You’re grinning down the phone. I can hear you.” I undoubtedly would have been grinning if it hadn’t been for the headache that was already settling in and getting itself comfy. Still, I decided that I could deny all without feeling too guilty about it. “That’s ridiculous,” I said. “I’m not grinning. Not a bit of it. Why would I be?”

  He made a noise like a cat choking on a pine cone. “Even if I was blind and deaf and stupid and hadn’t worked it out for myself, I’d still know you hated Jemima because Chrissy told me so, all right? You can drop the act.”

  My jaw clenched. So did my fingers and toes. “Chrissy told you that I … Chrissy? What did she say, exactly?”

  “She told me she hadn’t spoken to you once in all the time I’ve been with Jemima, not once without you having a go. ‘She’s so rude, she’s so nasty, she’s such a tramp, she’s too old for him’, I heard it all and I just want you to know that I heard it all.” I replied without pausing to think things through. But even if I’d taken the rest of the morning to ponder it, I probably wouldn’t have said anything different. “That’s rich coming from Chrissy,” I harrumphed. “You should have heard the names she called her!”

  Quite apart from being a low-down, dirty thing to say about my own daughter, this statement hardly constituted a cast-iron rebuttal of his original point. Nevertheless, I was surprised and a little disappointed to hear Robert issuing a bored sigh. I’d expected a sharp intake of breath at the very least.

  “Chrissy and Jemima got along fine,” he said. “They used to meet up in town without me sometimes.” He paused, letting it sink in. “She only joined in with your bitching because she didn’t want to argue. You know what she’s like. We used to laugh about it behind your back. We laugh about all sorts of things behind your back.”

  There was another pause. I was desperate to fill it, but I could barely remember what day it was. In recent years I had learned to expect all sorts of abuse from Robert. Given the things he said to my face, I could only imagine what he said about me behind my back. The idea that his sister might be joining in hit me like a punch in the stomach.

  “I have to go,” I whimpered. “I haven’t got time for this.” “Yeah, sure. Mrs Busy-High-Flying-Executive. Hasn’t a moment to spare. God knows what would happen to the insurance industry if you took a few minutes off from typing in people’s names and add–”

  I hung up. There’s only so much a person can take, even from flesh and blood. Especially from flesh and blood.

  Chrissy worked at a gym in Swords. She’d been there since she left school and she seemed to like it. Actually, she seemed to love it. She was as contented in her job as anyone I’d ever known. I’d always had a problem admitting that. I was all for my daughter being happy, of course I was. It was just that I could never remember looking down at her in her crib and thinking What a beautiful little girl – one day, many years from now, fingers crossed, she’ll get a job pulling strangers’ hair out of a shower drain. I’d met her boss a few times and he always went on and on about how great she was, how motivated, how focussed, how mature for someone barely out of her teens. It was all I could do to smile at him and mumble something like “That’s my girl”. Gerry had a minor problem with Chrissy’s job too, but his was easily explained: he couldn’t stand the thought of his daughter wearing a track-suit. If Gerry had had his way, women would have worn dresses and full make-up at all times, regardless of whether they were going out for dinner or digging up weeds in the back garden. It was like a phobia with him. If you sneaked up behind him and said the words “tomboy”, he lost his breath and had to have a quiet sit-down somewhere.

  “Mum!” Chrissy trilled when she answered her mobile. “I was just thinking about you. You know Linda, my old flat- mate? She was away for a few days and she got the exact same pair of –”

  “I was talking to your brother,” I said, not caring about the interruption.

  “Did he tell you about Jemima? He rang me at three o’clock this morning, absolutely polluted. Good riddance, I say.”

  “Oh? Is that what you say? Good riddance?” “Sorry?”

  I swallowed. “That’s what you think about all this, is it? Good riddance?”

  “Are you all right, Mum? You sound a bit –”

  “Because that’s not what Robert says. He says you’ll be sorry to see her go. He says the pair of you are great pals.”

  There was a pause. “Why did he say that?” Chrissy asked then in a watery tone. It was a classic response to an awkward question: giving nothing away while at the same time sounding childlike and vulnerable.

  “You tell me. Could it be because it’s the truth?” “Uh …”

  “I don’t know what to say, Chrissy, I really don’t. You’ve been letting me sit there week after week complaining about that horrible girl and then running to your brother to tell him all about it? I can’t, I don’t –”

  “Mum, listen –”

  “I know Robert hates me. I’m kind of used to it at this stage. But I thought we were all right, you and me.”

  “We are all right! Of course we are! And Robert doesn’t hate you, he just, you know, he … You and him … It’s a phase, that’s all.”

  “A phase? It’s been years!”

  “Don’t get upset, please, you’re going to set me off …” She’d no sooner threatened it than she burst into tears.

  Her huge, heaving sobs sounded like something out of an opera.

  “Oh, stop it!” I snapped, not meaning it to sound as angry as it came out. “I’m the one who’s upset here, not you.”

  I heard a rustle and a thump, then another rustle, a sort of groan, another thump and finally a tremendous gulp. From previous experience, I knew that Chrissy got very physical when she was upset. I could easily picture her falling around the place, dropping the phone, righting herself, dropping the phone again.

  “Are you all right?” I sighed, knowing the conversation had been flipped on me. “Chrissy?”

  “I’m a terrible daughter!” she whined.

  I forced my voice to sound pleasant. “No, you’re not. Of course you’re not. I was just surprised to hear it, I felt –”

  “I have to go, I can’t deal with this,” she said and, just like that, hung up.

  “Jesus Christ!” I hissed into the dead phone. Then I threw it into my bag and dropped my head into my waiting hands.

  The pain was rapidly intensifying now. My mouth had gone bone dry and my limbs felt like they belonged to someone else, someone who hadn’t been looking after them very well. After a few minutes of sitting as still as possible, I became aware of a figure standing behind me. I knew it was Jenny before I even turned around. Her arrival seemed like something that would happen, that was all.

  “It’s bad enough that you waltz in late again,” she said as I turned around. “Is it too much to ask that you log in at some point and do some, oh, what’s the word … work?
”

  You could stab her with a biro, a voice in my head declared. Just stab her and run like hell. No one would mind. You might even get a reward.

  “I’m not feeling well,” I said. “I’ve got one of my headaches. I’m going home.”

  Jenny’s eyes narrowed. “Is that so? Well, before you run off … when can I put you down for the tardiness hat?”

  It must have been around then that Gerry started fumbling with my neighbour’s buttons and zips.

  CHAPTER 3

  Before I took up with Gerry, I’d only ever kissed two boys. I met both of them in Cleopatra’s, which was by far the nicer of the two discos in Ashbourne in the early 1980s. It was popular with my crowd because we were all under-age and the bouncers there would let almost anyone in, provided they weren’t actually sucking their thumb at the time. Kissee number one was called Rory. I’d never seen him before that night in Cleo’s (as we called it), but every time I turned around, there he was. It didn’t dawn on me that this was anything other than coincidence until I felt a tap, no a poke, on the shoulder during the second of the three slow sets. I spun on my heels. Rory frowned up at me – he was about four feet tall – and spat the single word “Dance?” I was sixteen then and had never been slow-danced before. I thought it was about time, so I said yes. We swayed around for a few minutes in stony silence until I found the courage to ask him his name. He supplied it, then asked mine. Before I had finished speaking, he suddenly got up on tip-toe and clamped his thin, dry lips over mine. It wasn’t a pleasant experience, exactly, but it wasn’t foul either. We danced on for another couple of minutes before I ran away to tell the girls. I never learned his second name and I never laid eyes on him again. I suppose I was in shock. It was almost romantic – almost, but not quite. Kissee number two came along a few weeks later. He was called Marty Byrne and he was my first real boyfriend; we were an item for almost the entire month of July 1983. Like Rory, Marty made his initial move during a slow set in Cleo’s. Unlike Rory, he was capable of conversation, inasmuch as he had deeply held convictions about the relative merits of the local chippers, which he was all too keen to share. We had a little snog while dancing, then retired to a dark corner where he told me I was easily sexy enough to be in Bucks Fizz, maybe even Abba. That didn’t age well as a compliment, but at the time I was firmly swept off my feet. Ours was most definitely a relationship of two halves. The first couple of weeks were great. We saw Flashdance together, went for walks in the park, made a couple of return trips to Cleo’s (suddenly much more fun, now that I was part of a couple). Then he started going for my boobs. I had no real objection to being felt up, as such. It was just the way he went about it, all snarly and aggressive. He reminded me of nothing so much as a hungry dog that had spotted a dropped pork chop. I tried to explain that it was a question of manners more than anything else, but he wouldn’t listen. Then, one quiet Sunday tea-time, he called me up and announced that he’d started seeing “someone a bit more maturer”. A few days later I saw him hand in hand with Dolores Quinn, a notorious local bike (and shoplifter – she ended up in prison, I heard). The shock of being dumped was like nothing I’d ever known. “If it feels like this when the guy’s an arsehole,” I wailed at anyone who would listen, “what the hell’s it like when you’re in love?” That was it for me and romance, I decided – the risks were too great. I was never going to Cleo’s again – ever! Ever, ever, ever!

  Teenagers … Every small town has its Cool Guy, its Mr Hip-and- Trendy. All the girls are mad about him; all the boys say they want to beat the crap out of him, but really, they just want him to give them the time of day in the street. When I was growing up in Ashbourne, the Cool Guy was Andrew Healey, who was a few years older than us. His family was minted. Mr Healey owned a Ford dealership and Mrs Healey, who was Spanish, was rumoured to have come from serious money private-yacht-type money. Andrew was tall and lean with the whitest teeth and the deepest tan that any of us had ever seen. He wore expensive clothes and drove a brand new car admittedly a Ford Cortina – at great speed through the reddest of lights. And, yes, there’s no denying it, he was a good-looking boy, something like a young Warren Beatty. But he wasn’t the only game in town, not as far as I was concerned. The first time I spoke about it out loud, I was sitting in Caroline Drumm’s bedroom, listening to records and flipping through Smash Hits. This would have been a few months after Marty had dumped me. We were back at school then, starting our final year. But Caroline was in no mood to talk about exams or the unemployment that undoubtedly lay on the other side of them. The Arse On Andrew Healey, that was her topic for the day. She’d been wittering on about it for at least half an hour – not for the first time, either – and must have noticed that I wasn’t really listening. Did I happen to know, she slyly enquired, that people were talking about me? They’d noticed how quiet I’d become, how I seemed to have “lost interest”. Some said I was going to wind up in a convent. Others said worse. The word “lesbian” was never mentioned, but when Caroline stared in my direction and asked if I fully understood what was so great about Andrew Healey’s arse, I knew what she was getting at. (For some reason, rumours about possible lesbianism were very common in my crowd). Andrew’s arse was fine, as arses went, I told her. But he wasn’t my type. Too flashy. Too obvious. Caroline seemed personally offended. Who did I fancy then, she wanted to know, getting all intrigued. I hesitated at first; I didn’t want to embarrass myself. There was one guy, I eventually explained. He was a bit older than us, older than Andrew even. And he wasn’t exactly the pretty-boy type. Plus, he was kind of chunky. Caroline shrieked, bouncing on her bed. Who was it? Who? I bit my lip for a while, considering my options. Then I rolled my eyes and muttered the name: Gerry O’Connell. I honestly thought she’d laugh at me. I thought she’d laugh at me, then I would defend my crush, then we’d change the subject. We’d part on bad terms, with her thinking she had great gossip for the girls and me thinking I had much more sophisticated taste than they did. None of that happened. Instead, Caroline collapsed back on her duvet, pulled a pillow over her face and moaned like she’d just been stabbed. It was all very confusing for a moment. And then the penny dropped: she was agreeing with me. I couldn’t believe it. When she finally recovered the power of speech, she provided a long and detailed assessment of Gerry’s many qualities. He wasn’t pretty-boy good-looking, no, but he was – she thought for a moment – rugged. I’d never heard that word applied to a man’s looks before, but I knew immediately that it was the right one. And Gerry wasn’t chunky, she went on, he was big; like a real man should be. Even his clothes were great. All he ever seemed to wear was jeans and a T-shirt but they always fit just right. And his hair! It was all choppy and peaky, like he cut it himself with a Stanley knife, but it was so incredibly cool you could die on the spot. The best thing about him, though, she said in a husky whisper, was the way he looked at you. If you caught his eye walking down the street, you didn’t know whether he was going to laugh in your face or screw you senseless on the bonnet of the nearest car. Everything about this conversation had been shocking to me, but this last bit left me slack-jawed. None of my friends ever talked about getting screwed, senseless or otherwise. We talked about so- and-so being “a ride”, sure, and Andrew Healey’s arse, of course, got a regular airing. But by and large, when we talked about boys, we talked about the possibility or otherwise of kissing them. It wasn’t all we thought about, no doubt – but it was all we talked about. I left Caroline’s in a funny mood. It was nice, I supposed, in a giggly, gossipy, girly sort of way to hear that she had noticed Gerry (to say the least). But it also felt as if something that was mine and mine alone now had to be shared. I was dead right on that score. Caroline had apparently taken great comfort from our little chat and from that day forth, she started dropping Gerry’s name into random conversations. Every time she did it, some other girl would mutter that, actually, to tell the truth, don’t laugh, she thought he had “a certain something”. It was so strange. They always th
ought they were the only one.

  My return to Cleo’s, which came just after my exams, was not exactly triumphant. I’d been back in the game, as such, for about a month before I got so much as a dance, and that was from a sort of anti-Gerry. He was tall (way too tall for a half-pint like me) and incredibly skinny. It was like putting your arms around a ladder. Worse still, he had the wispy beginnings of an ill-advised moustache and the tiniest eyes I’ve ever seen on a human being. None of that would have mattered – at least, it wouldn’t have mattered as much – if he’d been fun to talk to. But he spent the entire three or four minutes of our relationship telling me about the time a few weeks previously when he got stung by a wasp. Apparently – and this was a point he was keen to emphasise – it had really hurt. There was a happy ending to the story, though – he’d squished the little bastard with a rolled-up RTÉ Guide. As he mumbled on and on, I realised that I had never been less attracted to anyone in my entire life. Several weeks later, when I saw Gerry standing by the bar, the first thought that popped into my head was this: that one wouldn’t tell you if he’d done battle with a frigging bear.