Skin Deep

by Liz Nugent

  Aunt Moira and Uncle Alan weren’t cruel at all, just boring. They watched television all the time. The moving pictures made me feel dizzy at first, but I got used to it quickly. Uncle Alan was a postman, so he’d be up with the lark and gone by the time I went to school. We all went to bed at the same time. They gave me books to read, but often I just watched the sea from my bedroom window until the darkness hid it, comforted by its rush and surge and wane, rush and surge and wane.

  Unremarkable years passed. Their real cousins visited at holiday times and I’d get a new dress and smile politely and help Aunt Moira make cakes. We got new carpets, and for Christmas one year I got an atlas. ‘When you grow up, you can go wherever you want,’ Aunt Moira said.

  ‘I don’t want to go anywhere,’ I said, and they smiled at me, and each other, misunderstanding my meaning. My island wasn’t in this book either.

  I didn’t need school friends, and I wasn’t targeted by the bullies. I played the unwanted orphan well, feigning shyness and insecurity. I wouldn’t let them in. Everyone wanted to befriend the orphan, but I remained aloof. I liked to see these girls fighting over who was going to sit beside me and who was going to walk home with me. They told me I was pretty. I enjoyed mirrors, looking at my clear dark skin and my shiny hair and my slim figure. I had enjoyed looking at myself that day in the orange dress, waiting for Daddy to come and admire me. Maybe I was still waiting.

  Sometime after I turned fifteen, without ever meaning to, I began to attract the attention of boys and men. When we were twelve years old, boys and girls had been separated into different schools, as if we would be a danger to each other. But now lads of all ages sought me out. Remarks were passed, insults sometimes. One time, a man in the butcher’s queue rubbed up against me in a way that I knew was deliberate. I, shocked and afraid to look at his face, stared at the fresh livers and chicken breasts behind the glass counter. A boy my own age in the cinema put his leg across mine, to the whoops of delight of his friends. Aunt Moira clattered him with her handbag. And then later, in an incident that terrified me, I was cornered by a group of schoolboys, younger than me, up a laneway, trying to pull up my skirt. I was rescued on that occasion, by an older boy who chased them all away and offered to walk me home. I knew him to see. He and his parents were always in the second row at Mass, which meant status or money, or both.

  ‘No, thank you,’ I said.

  But the next day, that same boy was waiting for me after school: ‘I’ll see you home, keep you safe, sure, you’re on my way.’

  I protested, but ‘It’s no trouble,’ he said.

  He talked all the way home, about his mum and dad and his brother. He let slip that his house was in the town, so this trip was definitely not on his way home. He had been doing a line with a girl in the class above mine, Katie O’Malley, but he said they’d recently broken up though they were still friends. I knew who she was. The popular, pretty one in that class.

  ‘You’re from the island, right? I’m really sorry about your mam and dad and your brothers, but aren’t you lucky you have relatives? Your uncle Alan is our postman. He’s been at our door every other day for as long as I can remember.’

  I said nothing. But he didn’t try to touch me and when we got to my gate, he didn’t ask for a kiss or a handshake or my phone number, or anything at all.

  ‘Bye now,’ he said. ‘See you tomorrow!’

  ‘Was that the Russell boy?’ said Aunt Moira when I got inside the house.

  I looked down at my feet.

  She reached out and held my elbow. ‘Well, don’t get your hopes up about him,’ she said, a frown creasing her face.

  After a few days of walking home with him, I began to feel safe. He never tried to touch me or suggested going to the pictures, or anything like that, so I began to talk back.

  ‘Do you like music?’ he said. ‘I’m going to be a musician, but my mam says I’ve to work in the hotel first.’

  ‘I like music.’ Aunt Moira and Uncle Alan had bought me a record player and loads of albums, so I was well versed in all of the current chart music.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ he said.

  ‘When I leave school? I don’t know. Go back to the island.’ I said it dolefully, because that’s how you’d expect an orphan to act.

  ‘What? Go somewhere smaller than here? Are you mad?’

  Perhaps I am.

  ‘What would you do out there?’

  I hadn’t thought that far. But I wanted to go home. I didn’t feel like I belonged anywhere else. I was a plant that had been uprooted and brought indoors. We lapsed back into an easy silence. He didn’t mind that I didn’t speak that much even though I spoke to him far more than to anyone else.

  Two weeks after our first encounter, he asked if I wanted to go fishing with him. We cycled out to Mulranny, and he’d brought along his brother’s rod for me to use, and he threaded the maggots on to the hook because he said he didn’t want me to hurt myself, but I watched closely. It reminded me of the time on the island when I’d found a dead goat swarming with maggots. I’d loved watching their busy little bodies falling slowly in and around each other as they delved into the flesh. He said that most girls got silly and screamed when they saw maggots and that he was glad I was different from most girls.

  I didn’t have a best friend in school. Most of the girls in my class had paired off and there were just a few of us on the periphery: Barbara Anne, who still couldn’t read and wore a bib at lunchtimes; and Eileen, who went to Mass every morning before school and to confession every afternoon on her way home. I kept myself apart. They had slumber parties in each other’s houses and wore blue eyeliner and lip gloss when I’d see them down the town at weekends. They had boyfriends. But now, so did I.

  A couple of weeks later, he asked if he could kiss me and I said yes. His lips pressed up against mine and they were surprisingly warm and soft. He had his eyes closed and I closed mine too. He put his arms around my shoulders and slid them down to my waist. I liked the feeling of it. The heat and the heft of him. I knew he liked me a lot because once, when I got a puncture in Newport, he walked my bike all the way home and sat me on his and steered us both.

  The girls in my class renewed their interest in me, even more so when it was discovered that I was dating Harry Russell.

  ‘I saw you with himself up the town on Saturday. What’s going on there, then?’

  ‘Does Katie O’Malley know about you two?’

  ‘Did he drop the hand on you yet?’

  Katie O’Malley had confronted me shortly after our first date and accused me of stealing her boyfriend. I tried to explain that he had broken up with her before going out with me, but she said it was a matter of days. ‘Good luck to you,’ she said bitterly. ‘If he can dump me like that, he’ll do the same to you.’ It seems Harry had a reputation. He had dated lots of girls in the year above me, and maybe he was going to ditch me quickly too, but I felt his attention was sincere. After we’d been seeing each other for six months, everyone knew it was serious. I was the centre of attention again. Katie and her friends ignored me on the streets of Westport. Jealousy.

  6

  For my sixteenth birthday, Aunt Moira invited Harry to tea and we ate at the dinner table instead of in front of the television. He said the dinner was delicious, and that next time he’d bring fresh mackerel and cook them himself. I could see Aunt Moira was charmed by him, and I noticed that she even behaved a little giddily around him, laughing at everything he said and flicking her spatula around like a magic wand. He knew Uncle Alan because he delivered post to his house. Unusually, Uncle Alan was in bad form that night. I could tell that he did not like Harry, from the way he was being overly polite and using bigger words than normal. I heard him arguing with Aunt Moira in the kitchen when they were washing up. I don’t know what it was about, but I was embarrassed by it. Harry pretended not to hear.

  I liked Harry well enough, and when his hands began to wander further than I knew they should,
I let them. I knew all about sex, had seen it on the island when I was a child – sheep, goats, and a pair of Dutch tourists once. I knew that he’d probably want to be doing it soon. I’d heard from the girls in my school that Katie had had sex with him when she was going out with him. I was not nervous or excited about sex. The groping made him happy and I didn’t mind. ‘Do you like that?’ he’d say as his hand searched below my waistline, and I’d smile, and he’d say, ‘Oh God, you’re such a tease,’ and become breathless.

  One time I pushed his hand away. ‘I don’t want to be another notch on your bedpost,’ I told him.

  He looked at me, deadly serious. ‘You know everyone thinks I’ve done it? Well, I’m going to tell you a secret. I haven’t. The nuns have you all terrified, thinking we’re sex maniacs.’

  Indeed, the nuns had told us never to be alone with boys and that they wouldn’t respect girls who did any more than hold hands. They said that if we sat on a boy’s knee, we had to make sure there was a telephone directory between you and him. We laughed at the nuns and at the idea of us carrying around telephone directories in our school bags in case you got lucky in the high field.

  Aunt Moira used to cut my hair, but now she said it was time I went to the hairdresser in town, and in I went. I loved the whole experience and didn’t read any of the magazines offered to me but just watched myself in all the mirrors, and watched everyone else looking at me. The resulting haircut was fashionable, after the newly married Princess Diana. There was talk of nothing else on the radio or even among Aunt Moira’s friends. Her wedding dress and the ceremony were like something out of a storybook fairy tale. Aunt Moira and I were glued to the television the day of the royal wedding. I absorbed every minute of it and bought all the magazines afterwards. I remembered Daddy insisting that I was the queen of Inishcrann and it seemed silly now to compare myself to this family of enormous privilege and wealth, but I still dreamed of stately homes and royal carriages.

  For someone who had grown up without it, I grew to love television. Aunt Moira and I used to watch some programmes together that we knew Uncle Alan wouldn’t approve of, so when he went to his regular church meetings, we watched whatever we liked. Dallas was brilliant. I used to impersonate Sue Ellen’s accent sometimes at breakfast time and Aunt Moira would give me a warning look that told me I was going to give the game away to Uncle Alan.

  That autumn, everyone in school was talking about Brideshead Revisited. When there were girls gathered to discuss the previous night’s episode, I did Cordelia Flyte’s accent and they hooted with laughter. I was a good mimic. But I liked those dramas about rich people who lived in great houses in the olden days, or the modern ones where they had telephones in their bedrooms.

  I was used to talking now, so I began to join in a bit more at school. Everyone said that I’d snared the most fanciable boy in town. Harry was the star of the GAA football team and was tipped to be a county player in a year or two. He’d played the piano at things in the community hall and people always love people who can make music, even when they are ugly, but Harry was handsome as well.

  I liked being the prize boy’s girlfriend. I thought to myself that I should drop the whole orphan thing and become one of the cool girls in the class. That was who I wanted to be now. I began to take an interest in fashion and make-up. I was beautiful. I always had been. My eyes were ice blue. My skin was smooth and I’d never had the skirmishes with acne at puberty that my classmates had. My lips were full and symmetrical and my teeth were white and even. I bought eye shadow and lipstick and Wrangler jeans.

  Gemma, who had a fight with her best friend over a borrowed skirt, declared that she was my best friend now. Gemma was the class’s biggest expert on make-up and boys, and her mother let her go to the GAA disco, which was supposed to be over eighteens. She told me stories about drinking cider in the high field with lads and asked me what I got up to with Harry. I didn’t tell her though, because he’d said those things were private and just between us. I began to go out with Gemma in the evenings and at weekends. Aunt Moira and Uncle Alan were so relieved that I was finally socializing that they never said a word about my late nights or the smell of alcohol on my breath. I had never given them any trouble, or anything to be proud of, for that matter. After six years in their house, they were still trying to be my parents, and sometimes I let them believe that I thought of them that way. They wanted me to be happy, so they let me do what I wanted. One night, I overheard them talking about Harry and me.

  ‘I hope this isn’t getting serious between them,’ Uncle Alan said. ‘His parents won’t accept the postman’s niece for their baby boy, and I don’t trust that family. I never will. Not after what they did.’

  Aunt Moira replied, ‘Don’t be worrying, they’re only young. It will never last, and sure, she’s never been invited to the house. That tells you everything. He’s not serious about her. I just hope he lets her down gently.’

  ‘If he hurts her, I’ll break his face for him,’ said Uncle Alan.

  ‘Indeed, and you will not, you’re overprotective of her. He has been good for her, and to her.’

  ‘So far,’ said Uncle Alan, sounding a sour note.

  I knew I could prove them wrong. Harry’s other girlfriends had been six-or eight-week flings. We were solid.

  A year went by and Harry did not dump me. Harry did his Leaving Cert and began to work in his family business. His dreams of being a musician were put on hold, but he still played football every weekend and was ‘one to watch on the field’ according to the Mayo News. We did everything except sex – well, everything we knew about in those days. I told him I wasn’t ready for sex and he agreed to wait until I was. Every couple of weeks, he’d check to see if I was ready, but I wasn’t keen and pregnancy was the biggest fear a teenage girl had in those days. He would often try to get me to go to his house when his parents were out. His dad owned the Carrowbeg Manor Hotel and was an important man in the town and his mum was on lots of committees and their housekeeper only worked mornings, so the house was often empty. There was a grown-up brother too, Peter, who was living in London. He was some sort of genius apparently, according to Aunt Moira. Harry rarely mentioned him. I doubted if they had much in common. Harry worked in the hotel, in the bar or as night manager or whatever his dad asked. Sometimes he’d play the guitar and sing at wedding functions. He paid for all our trips to the Ideal Cinema, and to Westport House, and for the carnival when it came to town, and for trips to the Wimpy for chips. He never let me pay for anything.

  Eventually Harry invited me to his house for dinner with the whole family at Christmas time. Everyone knew that this was a big deal. I’d been going out with him for a year and a half and never been across the door of his home. Uncle Alan raised his eyebrows to Aunt Moira at the news. Aunt Moira gave me money for another hairdo. They said little in front of me, but Harry was nervous about it. ‘My old man is a bit of a snob. He’ll want to know everything about you. My brother is home for Christmas. “The Pride of Westport” – that’s what it said in the Mayo News after he got into Oxford. He’ll be looking down his nose at Westport and comparing everything to London. Mind you, he probably won’t talk to you at all. He barely talks to me.’

  I was intrigued to see what Peter was like. In Brideshead Revisited, Charles and Sebastian had met at Oxford.

  I was nervous too. I didn’t like the sound of Harry’s dad. I dressed carefully that day and decided to play the sweet and demure girlfriend.

  Harry’s house was a big Georgian one with steps up to the front door and a large sitting room and dining room on either side. A staircase led down to a large kitchen with an Aga and there was a breakfast room behind it, and out in the back garden through the gloom of the December evening, I could see the glint of reflected glass from a row of greenhouses.

  Harry’s parents were welcoming.

  ‘So, you’re the girl who’s been leading my boy astray!’ said Mrs Russell, with a grin.

  ‘Oh, I think H
arry’s always been a bit astray,’ said his father, and although I think he meant it in an affectionate way, I could feel Harry bristling in the seat beside me. Mr Russell remarked on my accent.

  ‘You’re not local, are you?’ he said.

  I told them I’d moved to Westport when I was ten years old.

  ‘From where?’ asked his mother.

  I’m not sure why, but I hesitated, and Harry spoke up.

  ‘Mam, I told you before, Delia’s from Inishcrann.’

  ‘Oh, that’s right,’ she said, ‘the postman’s niece.’ She didn’t say it in a disparaging way. ‘I was sorry to hear you lost your parents so young, dear, though I suppose at this stage you don’t remember that much of them?’

  She said it in a way that suggested I had been somehow careless with my family. And yet, maybe I had been.

  It was that day that I decided I’d work on my accent to lose all trace of the island if I could. I was Harry’s girlfriend now. I was cool.

  Peter sat at the head of the table. He was quite like Harry, a scrawny version but quieter – more watchful, I suppose. He was twenty-four, which seemed impossibly old and sophisticated to me. He did not say much, but when he did, everyone listened. Even his father deferred to him. His accent was more refined than his family’s, a little more clipped, like you’d hear on the BBC. He spoke quietly and earnestly about portfolios and derivatives, and he might as well have been talking about brain surgery for all I understood. Mr Russell looked at me sympathetically. ‘Our Peter was in Oxford, did you know that, Delia? Studied economics. Brains to burn, you know. He’s already working for a financial analyst in London. I think he’s going to be a millionaire.’