At a Time Like This

by Catherine Dunne

  Tuscany, indeed. I can hear Nora’s voice even at this distance, can discern all the nuances, can imagine her eyes ablaze with her customary indignation. I can see the three of them this evening as they gather around the table. Maggie, Claire, Nora. My friends, my oldest friends; my very best friends in all the world. Nora will, of course, arrive first. Among her other uncanny instincts is how to arrive just in time to interrupt a conversation belonging to other people.

  ‘Hope I’m not too early’ she’ll say, with the little tinkling laugh she has perfected over the years, the one that makes me grit my teeth. ‘Frank insisted on giving me a lift, although I said “no”. But he said he didn’t want me catching cold.’ Neither Maggie nor Claire will exclaim over Frank’s sweetness in this instance – nor in any other – so Nora will just raise her innocent eyebrows and ask: ‘Is everything okay?’

  Claire will relent before Maggie, as she always does. Just as Maggie has always relented before I would. She, Claire that is, will offer her cheek to Nora and give her a warm, if brief, hug. Maggie will do the same.

  ‘Of course everything is okay. Why shouldn’t it be?’ Claire will say.

  But Maggie will have stayed silent, and Nora will have noticed. She’ll look from Maggie to Claire then, with those glittering eyes, that penetrating gaze she has when she suspects that she’s being kept on the outside. ‘Maggie?’

  Maggie will shrug and look down at her fingernails. I’ve told her often enough that such talons don’t suit her, but Maggie has held firm on this. She will have her vanities, even if one or two of them are not very subtle ones. ‘It’s just that I haven’t heard from Georgie,’ she’ll say. ‘Neither has Claire. It’s probably nothing, but I’m a little worried, that’s all.’

  There will be a silence. To smooth over it, Claire will ask Nora: ‘Have you heard anything from her since the last time we met?’ Knowing, of course, that such a thing was unheard of. Me? Contact Nora if I didn’t have to? Or even if I did? Nora will have the grace to realize the impossible kindness of Claire’s enquiry.

  ‘No,’ she’ll say. ‘No, I haven’t,’ in that tone of voice that implies she would discourage any such contact, even if it were forthcoming. Nora likes to take the high moral ground, and pitch her tent there.

  ‘Well,’ Claire will say, ‘maybe she’s just been delayed. Let’s sit and chat for a while and just hope that she gets in touch. It’s not like her.’

  And so the three of them will take their glasses into Claire’s new conservatory. They will sit among her fragrant plants and her tasteful water feature and her elegant, comfortable furniture. The conversation at first will be quiet, intimate in the ways of people who know each other a long time, where silences are valued as much as speech. Then Nora will get going, convinced that she is being deliberately kept in the dark. Sometimes she pouts, other times she lets her lip tremble.

  ‘You’re keeping something from me,’ she’ll say.

  And Maggie and Claire will exchange one of those swift, intelligent glances: one of those in whose orbit I should be included – had I been there. Nora’s neediness will have demanded a response. But I have noticed Claire’s increasing ability to handle our Nora, the last few times we’ve met. She has always got away with saying more than I ever could, given her gentle tone. But there is a new firmness to her now, a willingness to stop Nora in her tracks if she threatens to disturb. Claire’s latest mantra when anything displeases her is that ‘life’s too short’.

  ‘Too short for what?’ Maggie asked her the last time we met, when it was just the delight of the three of us.

  ‘For putting up with crap,’ Claire replied, with uncharacteristic vehemence. Maggie looked quickly over at me, but neither of us said anything. We both suspected that there was a new man in Claire’s life, but she was being very tight-lipped about him. Knowing Claire, we knew it was useless to ask. She’d tell us when she wanted to, or when it was over.

  Anyway, her new philosophy meant that Saint Nora was permitted to hand down fewer and fewer judgements on the nights when the four of us met. But I doubt whether that will be the case this time. I have no idea what Claire will say to appease Nora tonight. Particularly as Maggie’s unease is bound to grow throughout the evening, and Nora is gimlet-eyed when it comes to the emotional upheavals of others, given that she has never experienced any herself. I feel badly about putting Maggie under the spotlight, but it can’t be helped. And there is always the fact that Claire’s is the most soothing of all our households; the best, most comforting space for such small dramas to be played out.

  I remember the first time that we, Maggie and I, arrived at Claire’s new home. We got there, by prior arrangement, an hour before the stated invitation. Nora had exhausted all of us the last time we’d met – even patient Maggie – so we’d agreed that an hour together, just the three of us, was needed in order to fortify ourselves for the night ahead. We’d done this from time to time before, particularly in the early days. I’d have taken it further and not included Nora at all, but the other two always voted me down. Something to do with Nora’s loyalty and good-hearted-ness, and too many years and so much water under too many bridges. All clichés, as far as I was concerned, but I’d learned that that was one battle I was just not going to win.

  That first night, Claire’s new house was a revelation. I’d seen her talents before, when she worked with my father renovating his grubby flats all over Dublin. That was before they became known as ‘apartments’. But this time, in her own home, she had surpassed herself. She had turned a cramped and smelly redbrick into something open and spacious and, perhaps this is a strange thing to say, almost reverent in its clever use of light and natural materials. It made ‘House of the Month’ in the classiest of Ireland’s interior design magazines at the time, whose name I no longer remember. Claire’s new home had the sort of hushed interior I had rarely come across – at least, not in Dublin. The walls were all cream, the stair carpet a pale, muted colour, the tall windows filled with white, gauzy muslin. I remember that I admired the curve of the new brushed metal handle on her front door, the matching numbers. I’d never seen anything quite like it before, was startled at its brash modernity against the serene Victorian lines of a solid front door. It took me a moment or two to decide that I liked it, liked it a lot.

  ‘It’s new to this country’ she said. ‘I’ve just finished writing an article on door furniture for the Irish Times property supplement.’

  I grinned at her. Claire was always up to date. Beyond up to date, in fact. She created a need for fashionable accessories where none had existed before. I have to say I admired her for it.

  ‘Georgie, you wouldn’t believe the range, these days,’ she said and she rolled her eyes up to heaven.

  Something else I liked about her. She rarely took such things seriously – or, at least, did not take her expertise in such things too seriously. Claire was well aware of all the infidelities of fashion. But her sense of style, her up-to-dateness, her knowledge of what was trendy and what was not, was never a show-off thing, never that compulsive Look at all the things I know or even, Look at all the things I have that bedevilled many an evening for me, once Nora got into her stride. Luckily for me on that occasion, because Nora hadn’t yet arrived, the door furniture conversation never got a chance to develop. Just as well, or we’d all have been catapulted into a full-blown treatise on chrome polish, wipe-down surfaces, watching paint dry.

  And so the three of them will sit together this evening, in my notable absence, talking of other things. Something or someone will eventually break the spell. A phone call, perhaps, or an inappropriate observation from Nora. Perhaps a sharp reproof from Maggie, my most ‘loyal opposition’ as I once called her, given that she both supports me and challenges me on so many fronts at once. Who knows what the catalyst will be? What I do know is that tonight will be one of those times that is both an ending and a beginning. My absence will quickly become a presence, something to be confronted, its bones picked
over, its carcass finally buried before the funeral party moves on.

  Imagining them all tonight, Dublin seems light years away, almost as though my old life there has never existed. Or perhaps, has existed but in some hazy universe that keeps a parallel course with the one we call the real world. My connections to it have already begun to fade. And that is the feeling I get every time I come to Tuscany: that it is possible to walk out of your life and not miss it. To become a whole other person with different needs and attitudes and ambitions.

  Like Claire from Clare, who blossomed in the most unexpected ways once she left both home and family behind. I’ve never told her this, but the first time I saw her, I was stunned. It was Freshers’ Week in Trinity and we met at the English Society stand in Front Square. Over a quarter of a century ago. We were both about to become Junior Freshmen and I can still recall my own, studied nonchalance. But Claire’s fear was so transparent that I took pity on her. With that glorious red hair, pale skin and wide blue eyes, she looked like a saint about to be martyred. I remember that the Secretary of the English Society couldn’t keep his eyes off her. He was a nerdy guy, as young people today would say, but on that occasion, his jaw dropped so much I had to warn him against catching flies. Or wasps, or some such other nonsense.

  Boudicca, Paul used to call her, as I remember. After the flame-haired warrior queen, he said. I looked her up, Boudicca, that is, once I heard him make the comparison between her and Claire. ‘Tall and terrifying’, according to the Greek historian Dio Cassius; ‘a great mass of red hair fell over her shoulders’. I could never have called Claire ‘terrifying’, not in the warlike way that Cassius meant. I don’t think that Claire has ever hurt a fly – well, perhaps once, but that was without meaning to. But she did arouse strong emotions in all who came across her. Sometimes envy, sometimes resentment, often admiration. She had a fine eye for individual style even then. She wore flowing dresses, mostly in shades of green, huge gilded bangles and torc-like necklaces. But I don’t think she ever realized the full, silent charge of her impact. Or if she did, she had a wonderful knack of hiding it. I’ve seen her on late nights, or very early mornings; sleepy or tipsy, withdrawn or confiding, and she’s always the same. Serene, composed, even Madonna-like: the very opposite of what we perceive glamour to be.

  She told me once about the research she had done, once her hair grew back wild and curly and a deeper shade of red, after her mother abandoned her. That was always Claire’s word: abandoned. Her mother had not ‘left’ or ‘run off or even simply ‘disappeared’ – she had always ‘abandoned’ her husband and children and I think that Paul was the only one able to stop that hurting.

  ‘Red hair and pale skin are a kind of protection,’ she told me on that occasion. ‘It was an advantage to women, thousands and thousands of years ago. It meant that our skin made vitamin D from sunlight, so that we didn’t get rickets.’

  I must have looked at her blankly. I didn’t get the point of what she was trying to tell me.

  ‘Rickets caused pelvic deformations,’ she said, clearly warming to her theme. I suspected Paul’s medical knowledge was behind this enthusiasm. ‘It caused women to die in childbirth. So,’ she grinned, ‘my ancestors had an advantage and that’s how I get to be here. Paul says it means we’ll have lots and lots of babies.’

  I didn’t point out to her back then that I was there, too, without the crowning glory of red hair. Nor did I comment on her obvious desire for ‘lots and lots of babies’ – that was something else we didn’t have in common.

  ‘And the last bit of the jigsaw,’ she said, and this is something that did strike me even at the time as being significant, although I didn’t know why, couldn’t have explained its resonance, ‘red-haired women can endure more pain than anyone else, even more than red-haired men. What do you think of that?’

  Poor Claire. Maybe that’s why in more recent times she’s always chosen such unsuitable partners: because she can stand the pain. Or perhaps it’s why the unsuitable ones have been drawn to her. Do your worst, her cells seem to say. I can take it.

  It’s strange, though. Claire has always had the sort of physical charm that women envy but that men seem to find intimidating. When we were young, I used to think that when boys looked at Claire, they had to have thought that nobody so lovely could possibly be available. Surely she’d already been swept off her feet: claimed by some man, while they were mere boys. Except for Paul, of course. He was brave enough to capture her. When all that ended, though, Claire seemed to go to ground. She stayed resolutely single, using her looks as a shield to repel all those who would dare to approach her. Meanwhile, the more ordinary-looking among us got dates, invitations, letters from love-struck youths.

  Over the years, our little group has doled out too many evenings of comfort to Claire: too many to be good for her, I mean. Nevertheless, she’s not blameless either. None of us is. How can we be? As my mother used to say, ‘It takes two to tango.’ And that was the sum total of her wisdom regarding the war between the sexes. I was to interpret it as best I saw fit. And I have done so, finding it as satisfying a way as any of accepting, and allocating, responsibility for the things I do and for the things done to me. And Claire was definitely responsible for the tension and bad feeling that fractured our group friendship, almost beyond repair, some ten or eleven years ago. But that’s a whole other story.

  I close the shutters in my bedroom now, but leave the windows open. That way, the night air can filter through to me, but the possibilities of bug infestations are reduced. Never one to take chances, I plug in my mosquito repellent, always mindful of my first joyful, heedless visit here about four years ago. Back then, I had thrown open the shutters of my rented villa in an exultation of welcome, dizzy on champagne and stars and velvety darkness. The following morning saw me in the local pharmacy, my arms bitten and swollen, my face unrecognizable. I had thrown back the sheet during the night, too, apparently leaving just my feet and shins covered. I will simply not go there on the ferocity and the number of bites that had left me, as the grave signorina with her white coat and antiseptic air told me, ‘ completamente avvelenatd. Completely toxic. I remember thinking that there were probably quite a few people who would agree with that characterization, but I wasn’t up to even a weak stab at humour.

  I take off my makeup, tone and moisturize my face, brush my teeth with my new electric toothbrush. I undress in the huge bathroom, the tub already filled with warm, scented water, and I light the candles that I dotted around everywhere on my last visit. Just before I step in, my new mobile beeps. I scroll down through the text message and smile, surprised at the potency of longdistance love.

  I know that a full bath is an irresponsible luxury in a land that is short of water. But who cares? I shall allow myself this, as often as I like, until he arrives. Tomorrow, the brisk regime of early walks and purposeful activity will begin.

  For now, though, all I want is to float, quietly, on the small ocean of possibility that my life is about to become.

  Tomorrow will bring what it will.

  3. Maggie

  Georgie and Claire and I used to call her Helly, back then: short for Helicopter. I’m talking about Nora, of course. She’d always had this amazing instinct for where and when the rest of us might be meeting. And she’d just turn up. One day, she was hovering at the margins of our little group and the next, there she was, installed at the centre of things. Although, to be fair, her presence among us was partly due to me, too.

  Helly-Nora was three years older than the rest of us. At our age now, that kind of a gap means nothing. But back when we were eighteen, it was like an entire generation. When I met her first, I thought she was mature and a bit more serious than we were, and I liked that. I thought of her as a welcome change from the noisy fun and silliness of number 12, Rathmines Road.

  Helly and I – sorry, Nora and I – ended up in the same French conversation class during our first term. We were thrown together by both of us arrivi
ng late. I’d been standing outside debating whether to go in at all. I was still nervous of the academics, and I felt a complete fool that I’d mixed up the venue. Nora was even more flustered than I was.

  ‘Is this Mademoiselle Ondart’s seminar?’ She looked hot and damp, her forehead was wrinkled and perspiration was gathering in little beads across her upper lip. I remember noticing the faint shadow of a moustache and wondering why on earth she didn’t bleach it.

  ‘Yeah,’ I said, and stubbed out my cigarette. ‘But she’s already started and I don’t want to barge in. It’s kinda rude, isn’t it?’

  Her anxiety moved up a step. I could see it in her face. ‘Oh, but we can’t not go in. Not when it’s a conversation class. Because afterwards there’s no way to catch up on what we’ve missed.’

  I hadn’t thought about that. Or if I had, I didn’t care. I was never the most conscientious of students. I made sure I did just enough to get by. I liked Spanish and French well enough, but fashion was my passion back then. It still is. Not everything has changed. And music, of course. Those were the places where I really lived my life. The rest was just so much window-dressing as far as I was concerned. I got a real buzz out of making my own clothes and I even used to cut my own patterns. I loved the whole ritual of the tailor’s chalk, the tissue paper, the clackety-clack of the Singer sewing machine, and all the while there’d be music belting away in the background.