Skin Deep

by Liz Nugent

  ‘Just as well I live here then, isn’t it, and that you live there. After next week, we don’t have to see each other again.’

  ‘Yeah, but, like, do you fancy me?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘So you just had sex with a man you don’t fancy?’

  ‘No, I didn’t, and if you ever say different, I’ll call you a liar.’

  ‘You must fancy me a bit?’

  ‘I’m going out with your brother, or have you forgotten?’

  ‘Yeah, but you didn’t just have sex with him.’

  ‘Aren’t you supposed to have a girlfriend?’

  ‘Sort of.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Never mind.’

  I stood, fully dressed, in front of him and kissed his cheek chastely. ‘Forget this. It didn’t happen. Now get out, and let me get on with the job your father pays me to do.’

  He left the room, and I remade the bed again and hung the towels and straightened the curtains and polished the mirror. I continued working for the next few hours, rushing to make up the time I had lost. I thought how foolish I had been. I didn’t even find him physically attractive, but there was something about him that had made me want to kiss him. Did it mean I cared less about Harry? Did I care about Harry? My head was full of turmoil. I decided not to think about Peter. But part of me felt powerful.

  I wondered what I was going to say to Uncle Alan and Aunt Moira, who had scrimped to pay for extra grinds, who had boasted to all and sundry that I was going to be a doctor. Uncle Alan had made no secret of it on his postal rounds, he was that proud of me. The results for the entire class were posted on the school noticeboard. Everyone would know by now.

  When I finished my shift, Harry caught me as I tried to leave the hotel unnoticed. Peter was standing behind him.

  ‘Delia, I’m so … sorry! Peter just told me. Do you want to come with me for a walk, or a coffee?’

  ‘I just want to go home.’

  ‘Look, maybe it’s for the best. I mean, I don’t know what I’d do if you went to Dublin.’ He folded me in his arms and tucked his chin over my head as if to protect me like a child. I felt the heat of his body and how substantial it felt compared to Peter’s slimmer frame, and I was grateful for it. It was the way Daddy used to hug me. I felt safe. But I couldn’t stem the feeling of excitement. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Peter and he winked at me.

  The mood at home was funereal. Uncle Alan and Aunt Moira tried to pretend that they weren’t upset, but Uncle Alan, in particular, was shaken.

  ‘And you didn’t put anything else on the form? Why didn’t you put some other course on the form?’

  I choked on my words and couldn’t answer him and he said, in his quiet way, ‘I’ll just go and put the kettle on. Everything will be grand.’

  Harry arrived with a massive bouquet of flowers and a card at dinner time. The card said ‘You’ll always be an A to me’. I looked at the way his eyes sparkled more than Peter’s. The way his hands were bigger but rougher than Peter’s. I tried to put thoughts of Peter out of my head. I decided it hadn’t happened. We ate a subdued meal. The ice cream cake that Aunt Moira had bought to celebrate my results was left in the freezer ‘for another time’. She was more practical and feigned jollity.

  ‘Well, look now, we just have to go back to Plan A. Theresa will be delighted with those results and, who knows, you could have a shoe shop empire yourself in a few years! And haven’t you had enough of those old books? I bet you’re secretly relieved. Sure, Dublin probably wouldn’t suit you anyway, an island girl like you.’

  It had been years since she’d referred to me as an island girl.

  Gemma was more sympathetic than I’d expected. She rang that evening. ‘Look,’ she said, ‘you’re still going with the town’s biggest ride. Everyone’s jealous of that. And you know, I doubt a fella like that would stay faithful for the years you were in Dublin. It’s better to stay in Mayo, where you can keep an eye on him.’ She had been accepted into college in Galway but promised she’d be back every weekend. ‘Who wants to be a doctor anyway? Surrounded by sick and dying people? Sure, that was a mental idea!’

  My headmistress telephoned Aunt Moira and suggested that if I was determined, I could come back and repeat the final year and give myself time to do all of the study required. She diplomatically said that I should lower my sights though, that medicine was probably beyond my capability. I sat at the bottom of the stairs listening to the conversation, filling in the blanks for myself. I could not face going back to school for a whole year and feeling humiliated by all of the younger girls.

  In the hotel, I got on with my work and ignored Peter as best I could, though still I’d catch him looking and when we passed each other on the staff corridor he would wink or blow a kiss in my direction if nobody was around. I felt a kind of nervous energy. Then, one day, in his second week, it did happen again. Sex. I didn’t put up any protest at all. My curiosity had been piqued. He kissed me first, that second time, on the back stairs that led down to the laundry room. I could feel how nervous he was, how afraid that I would reject him. There was no reason for him to be on that stairwell. I guessed he was waiting for me. I was in control.

  I kissed him back and he asked which room we could go to and I led the way, knowing it was wrong and yet excited by the secrecy and the danger of being caught. There was little conversation. He put his hands on mine and pushed them downwards. Without saying anything, he showed me how I might better satisfy him, using my hands, my mouth, my breasts. This time, Peter had a condom. He was certainly experienced, I realized. He told me I was beautiful and that he wanted me, things Harry never used to say, though I knew he felt them.

  Afterwards, I felt the same mute excitement when Peter and I spotted each other, the same feelings of power and control when I let him brush his hand over my breast as I walked past him. Why had I done such a thing? Why had I initiated this sexual contact with someone I did not particularly care for, the brother of a boy that I was certain cared for me? There was something about Peter that Harry didn’t have: he was sure of himself. Even though Harry was better-looking and had a greater success rate with girls, Peter had the confidence of the arrogant and I could not help finding it attractive.

  One night, when Harry and I were going to the pictures, Peter tagged along, making faces at me behind Harry’s back, being openly affectionate with me.

  ‘You’re a bit too close there,’ said Harry to Peter in the back row of the Ideal Cinema on James Street, when he noticed Peter’s leg touching mine.

  Peter laughed. ‘I don’t think Delia minds?’

  I squirmed and Harry forcefully pushed Peter’s leg away and swapped seats with me.

  When it came time for Peter to return to London, he wanted to know if I would keep in touch with him. He hinted that I might pay him a visit in London if he sent over the money.

  ‘I thought you said I wouldn’t fit in,’ I said.

  ‘You’d fit in with me. You can’t be serious about Harry?’

  I needed to keep him dangling, but right then, Harry interrupted us.

  ‘You two look like you’re planning a bank robbery,’ he said, eyes wary.

  ‘Your brother is boring the arse off me about how machines are going to take over the world,’ I said, laughing.

  Afterwards, Harry said, ‘I don’t like the way my brother looks at you. I’m glad he’s going back to London.’

  I nestled into Harry’s chin so that he couldn’t see my blushes. ‘I only have eyes for you,’ I said.

  8

  Harry’s parents tolerated our relationship, but there was something in Uncle Alan and Aunt Moira’s history with the Russells that went unexplained and it wasn’t just the difference in status. The Russells had money and a big house and commanded more respect in the town, but I knew it was more than that. On the few occasions they would meet in the street, they behaved like strangers to each other.

  I had asked Harry if his dad would
give me a job as a receptionist in Carrowbeg Manor full-time, and I know he begged his dad to take me on, but the answer was no, with the excuse that he couldn’t fire one of the current staff to give me a job. Harry was embarrassed to give me this news because he knew as well as I did that Claudine was leaving at the end of the summer and that Nicola had asked to go part-time. The Russells were never rude to me, but I knew they thought Harry could do better for himself. I think they were pleased that the hotel high season was ending and I was due to go to Ballina. Peter had gone back to London to his exciting job, and my life would begin a new chapter.

  It was over an hour and a half on the bus from Westport to Ballina, so Theresa had said I could stay in a flat above the shop as a lodger and she would deduct my rent from my salary. I would go home to Westport every Saturday after work and return to the shop on Monday morning. Aunt Moira and Uncle Alan were pleased, I think, that I wasn’t going to be too far away, and that I’d still be joining them for Sunday Mass every week. Harry was learning to drive his dad’s car so that he could come to Ballina to visit at least once a week. After a summer of expectation and disappointment, I was feeling totally despondent. A shoe shop assistant. This was not who I wanted to be, and yet it seemed like the only option available to me. For the first time, I had no role to fulfil. Harry was behaving like I was moving to the moon.

  I started work in Calvey’s shoe shop on Tolan Street in Ballina on Monday the 19th of September 1983. Ballina was a traditional market town whereas Westport was planned, and though the Moy River was wider than the Carrowbeg, the town turned its back on the river and left it to the anglers, who enjoyed the peace. It was also just seven miles from Cregannagh village, where I had spent time in Dr Miller’s house in the aftermath of my family’s death, and from where the ferry left twice a day to Inishcrann. The proximity to my old home was hard to ignore, and yet I never ventured in that direction, not for the first few weeks anyway.

  My bedroom above the shop was also a storeroom, stacked floor to ceiling with boxed out-of-season footwear, ready to take their place in the window come the spring. Beside the bedroom, there was a tiny kitchen containing a sink and an electric cooker, and a sliding door adjacent to that revealed a stained enamel bath and ancient toilet that was also in use by the shop’s staff. Theresa was theoretically in charge as it was her shop. She was what we would call ‘eccentric’, and it was hard to see how she and Aunt Moira could be related. I think she was in her mid sixties, but she dressed as if she was a teenager like me, with legwarmers and ra-ra skirts. She was unmarried but loudly declared she had no time for boyfriends. I had met her several times over the years around Christmas when the extended family visited one another, but I had never taken much interest so didn’t see how unusual she was until I went to work for her.

  It was rumoured by Orla, the Saturday girl, that Theresa had been thrown out by the Sisters of Jesus and Mary in Crossmolina when still a novice. Aunt Moira had never mentioned it, but I was inclined to think it might be true. To model the shoes effectively, Theresa wore a different one on each foot in the shop every day. A stiletto on one foot and a hiking boot on the other was not unusual. Because she couldn’t actually walk in these combinations, she sat beside the cash register, rather than behind it, in a chair on wheels, to attract the attention of her customers. When a sale was made, she would roll in behind the cash register to complete the transaction. The shop was decorated with her collection of dartboards. Any wall space that wasn’t taken up with shelving or advertising had a couple of dartboards jammed into it. From her seat at the front, she would practise her game, flinging lethal arrows in various directions without any warning. In the first few days, I was terrified of losing an eye, but Frankie, who really ran the place, told me that she’d never so much as clipped anyone in twenty years.

  The customers loved Theresa. She would ask everyone their troubles and they had no problem telling her, because she would then make firm promises to say novenas and to intercede with the Lord on all of their behalves. She handed out plastic holy medals to every child that came through the door. The only part of shoe selling she did was the modelling and the taking of cash. Frankie, a man in his forties, did the rest. He had been there with her almost since she opened. My teenage mind of course jumped to conclusions about Frankie and Theresa, but his buttoned-up manner soon put paid to those illusions. He was neat, quiet and polite, and only ever talked about shoes and selling them. He was responsible for the ordering from England and the stock rotation and shelving. I had replaced a woman who had given up the job because she got married and moved away. Apart from that, there was only Orla, who called in sick every other week. Clearly, she had a life elsewhere, but she didn’t understand why I was stuck here. She was saving up to go to Canada, where her brother lived.

  ‘What are you doing working here? You could at least work in one of the fashion shops in Castlebar, because you’re good-looking, you know?’

  I certainly thought about it, but jobs were impossible to come by unless you knew somebody. I hated every single thing about the shoe shop. The smell of shoe leather made me nauseous, and because I was new, Theresa started me off in the children’s end of the shop. I hadn’t handled small children since I’d been in the orphanage. I resented them on sight. I’m not sure why that was, but their noisy, demanding behaviour dredged up memories for me. I could not disguise my intense and irrational dislike of them. I did not like to touch their often-grubby feet for measuring purposes, and had to keep eye contact with their mothers to avoid looking into their faces. In the week of my training, Frankie noticed and reprimanded me. I pretended I didn’t know what he was talking about, but when the door swung open with the chime of a bell and a child appeared, I would have to urgently go to the toilet and leave Frankie to deal with them.

  The days of those first few weeks were long and boring. I wondered if I was sickening for home, for Westport, until I realized it was the sea that I missed. I could neither hear it nor see it from my upstairs flat.

  Harry, his friend Marcus and Marcus’s girlfriend, Triona, drove over to see me on the first Thursday night and we all went to the Savoy to see ET again, and afterwards we went to Cafollas. I didn’t want to say anything in front of the others about how miserable I was, and entertained them with stories of Theresa’s eccentricities. It turned out that her quirks were well known throughout the county, if not the province. ‘I thought Moira would have told you about her?’ But Aunt Moira and Uncle Alan never spoke badly of anyone.

  At the end of September the evenings were still bright, and I thought about cycling out to Cregannagh one evening on a bicycle I could borrow from Theresa, but the shop work seemed to exhaust me and Cregannagh just seemed too far. One evening, I decided to head out towards the sea in the other direction. I cycled out of town across the Moy River, past St Muredach’s Cathedral and along the Quay Road, from where I could see the SS Creteboom, the concrete husk of a ship that had been abandoned in the harbour since 1937, never used. Two miles later, I could feel the Atlantic air, and drank the sea into my bones. I was wiped out after that, so most evenings I read books in bed about posh people behaving badly and daydreamed about what my life could have been like as a doctor in Dublin or some other exotic part of the world. The effort of frying a chop and boiling some onions almost didn’t seem worth it, and yet I was permanently hungry. For the sea, I thought.

  It was only when the nausea became overwhelming in the middle of a busy Saturday at the end of the third week in October that I first realized it was not the smell of shoe leather that was making me sick, it was not the workload that had me exhausted, and I wasn’t pining for the sea. I didn’t need a doctor to confirm my suspicions. A quick calculation in my head was all I needed, and when the truth dawned on me, I was in a state of horror. I was nine weeks already. In school, the nuns had warned us that you could get pregnant the first time you had sex, but nuns told us all kinds of things that we suspected were not true. They told us that you could die of co
ntraception, that unmarried girls who had sex would go to hell, that no man would marry a girl who wasn’t a virgin. Where sex was concerned, the nuns had told us everything but the truth. Or so I had thought. But I was pregnant, after my first time.

  There was nobody I could tell. Peter was back in London. I thought of writing to him, but what would be the point? I knew Harry was still a virgin. Aunt Moira and Uncle Alan would be appalled, and I would certainly lose my job if Theresa was to discover that her unmarried employee was pregnant.

  I tried punching myself in the stomach. I bought a bottle of gin and boiled kettles. I sat in the bath, drinking gin until I passed out, only coming to when my head slipped below the water. The baby clung on to my insides like a parasite.

  9

  I was becoming desperate. The only idea I could think of to manage the situation was to sleep with Harry and then somehow pretend that the resulting baby was premature. I would still lose my job, but Harry would stand by me. Harry would marry me in a heartbeat. He would never suspect that he wasn’t the father, and Peter would keep his mouth shut. I was sure of it. In my panic, I never thought of the long-term consequences of such a plan, but I knew that having a father for your baby had less dire consequences than not.

  A week later, Frankie and Theresa noted my pallor and my exhaustion. Theresa said she’d been sold a pup. ‘Moira told me you were a robust girl, that you’d be driven and energetic, but here you are all the time looking like you could be knocked over by a feather. What is wrong with you at all?’

  I resisted her attempt to make me see her doctor, and tried to keep my nausea under control. The nylon smock coat that had been issued as the shop uniform belonged to my predecessor, who was considerably bigger than me, so thankfully it would cover the swelling I could begin to feel in my stomach.

  When I went home on the bus to Westport that Halloween bank holiday weekend, Harry met me at the bus stop and I asked him if we could go for a cycle out the road. It was late already, nearly seven o’clock and duskening, but I got on his crossbar and we cycled out towards Murrisk. When we got to the tiny, broken-down, roofless abbey, I asked him to stop and follow me inside. I laid my coat down on the gravel.