by Julie Corbin
And there is another significant similarity between myself and Kirsty – the name change. By the time I reached eighteen I had stopped calling myself Scarlett and went by my middle name instead. I needed to be a new me, and Scarlett was burdened with expectations I could never live up to. It wasn’t an easy transition and there came a point when I was in over my head. If it hadn’t been for my brother Declan, I would be leading a very different life.
11
My mother called me Scarlett as an act of defiance. Everyone in our village was called Bridget or Mary or Anne – good girls’ names full of Catholic history, denial and guilt woven into the alphabet. While my mother spent her afternoons cleaning the church and arranging the flowers, her mind was in Hollywood – Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, Show Boat and Gone with the Wind. By the time I was ten I knew my mother didn’t want a daughter who flushed red and penitent when the nuns walked past, their black veils billowing out behind them. My mother demanded that I stand up to authority in a way that she never could. She wanted rebellion. She wanted a daughter who didn’t listen to threats of hell and damnation – only a few misplaced footsteps away and usually involving the opposite sex; she wanted a daughter who walked tall through school, sure of her own self, her own destiny.
‘Scarlett O’Hara didn’t bend to any man’s will. She rolled up her sleeves and took charge. She made things happen for herself.’
I’d seen the film a dozen times and it seemed to me that for all her feisty rebellion, Scarlett wanted nothing more than a man – first, the insipid, wet rag Ashley Wilkes who was blond and fey and flimsy as a dandelion clock. And then, latterly, she realised that the dark and dangerous Rhett Butler was, after all, just the man to tame her, but by then he had already gone.
‘Bugger that nonsense,’ my father said. He was an easy-going man who came home each evening smelling of fresh air and cigarette smoke, let me rest on the arm of his chair and gave me the last of his tea, crystals of sugar like silt in the bottom of the mug. ‘We live in a modern world, Scarlett. You listen at school; you get yourself a career. Education is the way to freedom. You’ll have a home of your own. You can have a husband and children if you want. It will be your choice. That’s what education and a career will buy you – choice.’
I had three brothers – Diarmaid and Finn who were two and four years older than me, and Declan who was a full ten years older and was the responsible one. He made sure that the loan for the tractor was paid on time, that my father didn’t drink too much whiskey and that we always had a shilling each for the collection plate on a Sunday. And unlike my father, who experienced my mother’s mood swings as a disinterested observer rather than a player in her life, Declan managed our mother with an enviable finesse. He intuited her moods with an accuracy that my other two brothers and I never learnt how to match. My mother sang every note on the emotional range – from untrammelled joy to a limb-trembling anger – and Declan was like a human tuning fork. Pitch perfect, he persuaded my mother out of her temper, saving me from her tongue and from her fists that lashed out in my direction. When my mother was down, as she often was, weeping by the sink or railing against fate, Declan would pick wild flowers for the kitchen table or do odd jobs for the solicitor whose land bordered ours, and come home with a leg of lamb or a pound of cheese. He was the only one of us who ever put a smile on her face.
Diarmaid and Finn were as wild as the weather allowed them to be. They were boys with precious few morals and almost no conscience, feral creatures of the earth. My mother ignored them both. She put food in front of them and washed their clothes but otherwise, as long as they stayed out of her way, she was oblivious to them. If a farmer turned up at the door complaining that they’d been worrying his sheep or taking his rowing boat out fishing without asking him first, it was Declan or my dad who doled out the punishment.
So, most of the time, the full force of my mother’s attention was focused on me. The nuns told me I was clever enough to go on to university, but, unlike my father, my mother had little respect for education and when she heard what the nuns had said to me, her displeasure filtered through to her hands which slapped and dragged me around the kitchen. ‘The answers aren’t in books!’ she bawled. ‘The answers are in there.’ She prodded close to my heart. ‘You need gumption, not a degree! Courage not learning, otherwise you’ll go the same way as all the other women around here.’
She’d been university material herself and where had that taken her? Nowhere. Pregnant at seventeen, she’d left school and moved into the cramped and leaky farm house that remained her home for over thirty years. She wanted me to break the mould, to ‘be different’, to ‘be an entrepreneur’, like Finuala Finnigan, a former classmate of hers who lived mostly in London, and spent August in a huge house on the edge of our village. My mother idolised her because she had made a success of herself; she travelled, she wore expensive clothes, and every third or fourth summer the man she brought back to Ireland was an updated model. She was famous ‘in the places that matter’ and she had most of the village scampering around after her – cleaning, shopping, catering, driving her and her London friends to and from the airport. My mother, who cleaned for her, seemed to see it as a privilege. ‘I’m not doing it for the money, Scarlett. I’m doing it for the friendship.’
It was an unequal friendship – my mother the poverty-stricken relation living at the edge of Finuala’s rich and glitzy showcase of a life. The summer I turned fourteen, my mother came back from Finuala’s estate bursting with enthusiasm. She’d asked Finuala if she would be kind enough to be my mentor. ‘Why?’ I said.
‘Why? Why?’ she shrieked. ‘Isn’t it obvious? She’ll open doors for you.’
I didn’t want to do it, of course, but refusing my mother would have invited a storm of temper so I spent three long weeks ‘shadowing’ Finuala. I learnt exactly how she liked her morning coffee, her afternoon smoked salmon sandwiches and her fruit tea. Most of her morning was spent on the phone cajoling or downright bullying members of her London staff. She’d opened a company that sold authentic Far Eastern artefacts and it had grown from a turnover of less than a million to over one hundred million in ten years. Every afternoon brought a steady stream of people in and out of the house – masseurs, beauticians, professional chefs, business people, lawyers and accountants. I was allowed to sit in on her ‘entrepreneurial’ meetings, but mostly whatever was being discussed went over my head. She had a grasping quality about her that made me cringe and she was forever giving me knowing looks and arch little stares. I hadn’t a clue what she was on about.
I did my best to ‘learn my way to success’ but I knew I wasn’t fooling her. On the final day of her not-exactly-a-holiday because ‘holidays are for wimps’, my mother was taken into the drawing room, which overlooked the water, a spectacular view of slate-grey sea and white-topped waves, stark cliffs with a sheer drop to the shore, a view that always stopped me in my tracks but Finuala told me she didn’t see it any more – ‘it’s just land and water. The beauty is in the owning of it.’ I listened at the door while she reported my failure to my mother. ‘Scarlett won’t make anything of herself, Maureen. She has too little drive. No imagination. No business acumen.’
My mother left Finuala’s house with her head down and her furious steps tearing holes in the ground. I knew I was in for it when I got home, and sure enough, I’d no sooner come through the front door than my mother was a whirling dervish at my side. ‘What was the point in me naming you after someone with courage when you—’
‘Scarlett O’Hara isn’t real!’ I cried out, and she slapped me so hard that I fell over sideways and banged my head on the floor. It detonated an explosion inside my skull – fireworks, lights, crackles and pops, whooshing . . . and then burning pain and a ringing ear, intense throbbing that would last for days. I didn’t get up from the floor straight away. I kept my eyes shut and lay there until teatime. I thought about what had just happened and decided that was the last time she would eve
r hit me.
So help me God.
I stopped talking to her and she to me. Whenever she did throw a comment or a question my way I either ignored her or I lied. Declan was the buffer, but he wasn’t home much because he had a mortgage on his own little place and he was courting – a beautiful, serene girl who I’d always imagined was going to become a nun because stillness emanated from her like morning mist from the earth. Her name was Aisling and I was there the first time she and Declan laid eyes on each other. He’d come to collect me from school and Aisling was also waiting in the car park. She was four years older than me and about to leave school to study nursing in Dublin. When their eyes met, I swore that I could see a channel open up between them. Like the falling in love of a fairytale, or one of my mother’s films, they walked towards each other and said a few shy words before arranging to meet up later.
I was happy for him but afraid for myself because Diarmaid and Finn were living in Galway City and it meant long evenings on my own with my mother. My father was often busy in the evening – either still at work in the fields or, when darkness fell, he could be found in the pub. He could never sit still for long unless there was a pint in his hand and he wasn’t allowed to drink at home – only my mother was allowed to do that. And whenever she was drunk, I was treated to the thrust of her advice: ‘Don’t be marrying any of the men from around here. Drunkards, every last one of them. You’ll be stuck with four children. I was seventeen when I had Declan – seventeen.’
When I was sixteen, I got myself a boyfriend. I met him at Mass, of all places. He was only there because his mother had broken her leg and was needing an arm to lean on. He was two years older than me and, although we’d never met before, I knew who he was because Diarmaid and Finn often spoke of him.
‘Mam was feeling optimistic when she named me after Gabriel the Archangel,’ he told me. ‘Means strength of God.’ Mass was over and he was waiting for his mother to finish talking to Father O’Riordan. ‘It’s all horseshit though, isn’t it?’
‘Don’t talk to me about mothers and names,’ I said. ‘I haven’t lived up to mine and now my mother hates me.’
‘What’s your name then?’
‘Scarlett.’
‘As in scarlet woman?’
I laughed. ‘As in Scarlett O’Hara. Gone with the Wind.’
He turned his head to one side and blew cigarette smoke across the tops of the gravestones. ‘Hard to live up to a someone from the films.’
‘I tried to tell my mother that. Couldn’t hear out of my left ear for a week.’
I went out with him because of his dark eyes and roguish air. He wasn’t rough with me like Diarmaid and Finn were. He wasn’t forever elbowing me out of the way or pretending he hadn’t just tripped me up. And he wasn’t always walking away before I’d finished my sentence. He treated me like Declan did – he was kind and he listened. He made me laugh. He stuck two fingers up at convention and I admired him for that. He was brave and defiant and when I was with him I felt the same.
Of course it was going to end badly, but tell that to a sixteen-year-old girl who has fallen in love. The last time we were together, we spent the early evening outside, just the two of us, and for months afterwards I relived every word and action, savouring the memories like a sweet-toothed child savours each square of her weekly bar of chocolate.
We were sheltering from the wind, protected by the thick trunk of a lone ancient oak tree, a welcome windbreak on the otherwise treeless landscape. Gabe had come back from his brother’s in Dublin with some marijuana and had just rolled a joint. He lit it, cupped both hands around it and inhaled deeply. I was telling him about how much I wanted to leave Ireland and that I’d do anything to get away. When he didn’t comment I snuggled closer and said, ‘Are you listening to me?’
‘I’m listening.’
‘Do you believe me?’
‘Of course. Who doesn’t want to leave Ireland?’
I smiled and slumped against the tree, my back supported as I looked up through the bare branches to the sky. It was a perishing cold night and my breath froze in front of me but the sky was cloudless and the stars were sharp and clearly defined. I stared up at them, counting, making patterns, imagining other galaxies, other earths, other girls like me. I wished I knew the names of some of those stars, as if by naming them, they would somehow be more real, more tangible. Why did they never teach us anything useful at school?
‘Honours leaving Cert,’ Gabe said.
‘What?’
‘Mr Byrne was teaching us. I’ll bring my binoculars next time. You can see Saturn and Mars really clearly at this time of year.’
My mouth dropped open. ‘Are you reading my mind, or what?’
‘Or what,’ he said. ‘Now give me a kiss.’
I brought my face slowly towards his, then, at the last moment, swerved off to one side and took the joint out of his fingers.
‘I knew you were going to do that.’
‘Transparent, am I?’ I drew a draught deep into my lungs.
‘As glass.’
It felt very daring to be puffing on the joint. I knew if I was caught I’d be damned to hell and back, and never be allowed out again but with Gabe I felt invincible. My eyes narrowed as I drew the smoke into my lungs then I passed the joint back to Gabe and gave in to the feeling. I let the drug swirl inside me like a Mr Whippy ice cream, turning and coiling through my blood until I feel unscrewed, relaxed into a better version of myself, where time stretched and I lived in a safer part of now.
‘When I was small,’ I said languidly, ‘I imagined that the night sky was a blanket . . . and the stars were holes in the blanket . . . and behind the blanket was the light.’
Gabe stretched his arms upwards and then let them drop back to his side. ‘We have a budgie and at eight o’clock every evening Mammy puts a cover over the cage. There may even be some holes in it.’
‘Exactly! Just like God’s blanket. He covers us up at night so we can all get some sleep!’
We chuckled for a while and then we fell silent again. My mind was like still water broken occasionally by thoughts that bubbled to the surface then escaped into the air where, unacknowledged, they evaporated. I felt so at ease with myself that I wanted to live in the moment for ever. Not to stop time so much as to suspend it, like in a photograph.
When we finished the joint, Gabe started to kiss me. His tongue was warm and wet and teased its way around the inside of my mouth. His hands were broad, the fingers long and agile and he slid them inside my coat and under my jumper. I let them roam. He moved them up and around my waist, then down to the small of my back. It felt good and I relaxed into him. He was about six inches taller than me and we fitted together perfectly, my curves melting into his angles. His hands found the inside of my bra and he snuggled closer. He coaxed my nipples awake with his fingers and I felt something pull deep in my stomach.
‘Better stop.’ I nudged him away. We’d had sex already, just the once, the details lost in a drunken haze and I was hoping the second time would be a bit more romantic.
‘Come on, Scarlett.’ He was kissing my neck, making my blood heat up. ‘You know how crazy you make me.’
‘I can feel it growing against my stomach,’ I giggled, and held him back from me. Then suddenly I was serious again. ‘I don’t want to get pregnant.’ Imagining the shame it would bring to my family made me shiver and Gabe drew me close again.
‘I’ll pull out just before I come.’ He lowered the zipper of his jeans. ‘I promise.’
His hands pulled at my jeans and I slapped him around the head with my gloves, ineffectually, because in my heart I’d already given in. There was a brief gust of freezing cold air before his warmth covered me and he lifted me up, my back against the tree. His voice whispered persuasively in my ear but it was unnecessary because I was already a slave to my nerve endings and couldn’t think past this moment, couldn’t really think at all; I was simply living the experience.
Afterwards, we zipped and buttoned up our clothes and collapsed down to the ground. I sat across his knee, wrapped up, warm and close. And when we heard his friends coming I slid my hands under his jacket and turned my face up for one last kiss before our peace was shattered. I didn’t like his friends. They were coarser than he was. They were like Diarmaid and Finn, always pushing and shoving and trying to outdo each other.
We left the protection of the tree and started walking across the field. They say that Ireland is the greenest place on earth and that’s because it’s usually raining, and that night the rain was in our faces and the wind blew us sideways so that we moved like crabs, scuttling right and then left. Gabe had hold of my hand but he was talking to his three friends and I had to run to keep up. The moon was almost full but still there wasn’t enough light for me to see by and the grass, ruptured by furrows and clumps of weeds, caused me to stumble. Each time Gabe pulled me upright again.
The pond at the bottom of the field was half frozen and his friends wanted to slide on it, had some mad idea about racing each other. They were pumped up with foolish bravado that had them egging each other on to bigger and faster feats. I watched Gabe’s face as he made up his mind whether to stay with me and risk being called a sissy or join in with the competitive jousting. Before we got as far as the pond there was a barn on our right-hand side. ‘Why don’t you wait in there, Scarlett?’ Gabe asked me, pulling a bottle of whiskey from his pocket. He took a mouthful and then handed the bottle to me. ‘I’ll need to go with those three, otherwise God only knows what will happen to them.’
Like an obedient child, I trotted off to the barn. I knew I was trespassing but was too far from home to know who owned the farm, and so somehow that made it all right. I slid open the latch and went inside. Meagre light seeped in through holes that spotted the wooden roof and sides. The barn was about thirty feet in length and full of hay, piled five bales high and ten bales deep. There was a gap at ground level and I squeezed myself in between two of the bales. While I waited, I drank a third of a bottle of whiskey and my thoughts grew less joined up with each mouthful. What would Declan say if he knew that I pretended I was asleep in bed but, most nights, at ten o’clock I climbed out through the window? God help me if I was pregnant. My mother would skin me alive. I’d end up like her. Bitter and twisted. I didn’t want to disappoint Declan but I loved Gabe. He made me feel like I belonged. Sex made me feel like I belonged. Sex.
