Our Little Cruelties

by Liz Nugent

  Luke and Will were getting laid left, right and centre. Will had been sexually active since he was sixteen. I’d had a few fumbles but was still embarrassingly a virgin until I met Sandra.

  Sandra was in my French lectures. She was always late or absent, and there were times when I was sure she’d thrown clothes over her nightdress to try to make the lectures on time. She reeked of booze and cigarette smoke and those things would have put me off except for the fact that she was hilarious. She lived her life in chaos with a family of eleven siblings and various pets with human names like Emily or Stephen, so that when she told a story about home you could never be sure whether she was talking about her dog or her brother. She was often the centre of attention in the student bar, and even though we were all pretty broke, we would scramble to find money to buy her an extra pint if it meant she entertained us for another half-hour. She was shameless in the way she talked about sex and lovers and masturbation (girls masturbated – who knew?) and naturally most of the guys thought they had a chance with her. She wasn’t especially pretty and was quite chubby, but she was attractive in the best way. Everyone wanted to be in her circle. Since I took copious notes at lectures and photocopied them for her when she was absent, I was firmly in her circle.

  Luke was playing a gig in the Olympia. It was a big venue for The Wombstones and, like everyone else, I wanted to sleep with Sandra. I thought I could seduce her with tickets to Luke’s show. The only drawback was that we’d have to share the box with Mum, Auntie Peggy, Will and whoever he was bringing to the gig. Sandra was thrilled when I suggested she come as my date, though I was dismayed when she described Luke as ‘a total ride’. It amazes me how girls lose their minds over average-looking guys if they can sing a bit. Everyone in college had bootleg tapes of Luke’s previous gigs. She knew all the lyrics to the songs.

  I invited Sandra to our house for dinner first. Luke’s gig was at midnight. Mum was pissed off about this. ‘What kind of concert starts at midnight? It’s ridiculous!’ The truth was that at midnight all the pubs in town would be shut and the Olympia had a late serving licence. You could legally drink there until two a.m. I didn’t want to tell her that most of the crowd would be drunk.

  Will was to collect us at eleven thirty and Auntie Peggy would meet us there. Sandra arrived for dinner half an hour later than the time I’d told her, which was exactly what I’d expected. I’d told her that dinner was at eight and asked Mum to prepare it for eight thirty. Mum said she wasn’t going to go to much trouble. She said she’d prepare a hearty soup and buy a loaf of crusty bread and made a big deal of how we’d all have to drink copious amounts of coffee to keep us awake. Sandra burst into the house like a grenade, fawning over my mum. ‘I loved you in The Silent Garden in the Eblana,’ she told her. ‘Our whole family went to see it. We took up nearly half the theatre!’ Mum was immediately mollified and flattered that Sandra was a genuine fan and overlooked the fact that Sandra was dressed as Madonna in her ‘Like a Virgin’ days, years behind in fashion terms, cheap and trashy – bra straps on display, a ripped miniskirt and badly bleached hair that lay flat on one side of her head like cattle-trampled straw and wildly back-combed on the other side like a haystack.

  Mum and she chattered happily and, as with all Irish meetings, soon found people in common. Sandra’s aunt had been a make-up artist in RTÉ when Mum was in the soap opera. Sandra’s next-door neighbour had been Mum’s obstetrician when all three of us were born. Mum winced and paled. ‘I don’t think we need to go into any stories of childbirth, do we?’

  Mum changed the subject then, moaning again about the late hour of Luke’s gig.

  ‘You don’t have to come,’ I said, not unreasonably, but knowing that Luke would appreciate seeing her there.

  ‘Of course she wants to go,’ said Sandra. ‘This is Luke’s big night, you don’t want to miss it, do you, Melissa?’

  Mum smiled wanly. ‘Of course not.’

  When Will arrived to collect us, he looked Sandra up and down then gave me a quizzical stare. As we were getting into the car, he muttered, ‘Where did you get that?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Her, it – Jesus, the state of her. Brian, tell me you’re not serious about her. She’s an embarrassment.’

  I felt the blood rush to my face. Will didn’t know her and was judging her solely on her appearance. He hadn’t heard her laugh or tell stories or sing a bawdy song. ‘Fuck off, Will, she’s brilliant craic. Don’t be so shallow.’ He snorted.

  I was fuming. We all piled into the car and I thought he might warm to Sandra as we drove into the city centre and she regaled us with some hilarious tale of their childhood bunk-bed arrangement in the modest three-bedroom house they grew up in. Will remained silent while Mum hooted with laughter and I fake-laughed too even though I’d heard the story before because I needed to counter Will’s rudeness. As soon as we were parked up, he strode ahead of us, making it clear he didn’t even want to be seen with her. Will didn’t have a date for this night. His natural confidence usually ensured he had some gorgeous blonde on his arm, but he made it clear that going to this gig was an inconvenience to him, and both Mum and he joined forces then to say how selfish Luke must be to put on a concert this late. It was nonsense, obviously, Luke had no say in the timing of the performance. He was lucky to get this venue. It was a break for him. Auntie Peggy met us at the stage door, rattled by the late-night action in the laneway: semi-naked teenagers, street-pissers and glue-sniffers were to be seen the length of the lane. We were admitted and shown to a box by a doorman, and Mum patronized the guy by insisting on tipping him when there was no need.

  The support band came on first. They were so bad that we all stood in the corridor behind the box to get away from the noise. Will offered to go to the bar to get drinks. Mum, Auntie Peggy, Sandra and I stood around chatting, but Will took his time and when he eventually came back, the warm-up act had finished, thank God. We went back into the box and took our seats. It must have been after twelve thirty. Mum was yawning and Will kept looking at his watch and muttering ‘for fuck’s sake’.

  Then The Wombstones arrived on stage. Luke looked utterly ridiculous in one of Mum’s pink sequinned jackets over a cartoon T-shirt. Mum took a pair of opera glasses out of her bag and peered down at the stage. Sandra stood up and cheered. Auntie Peggy and I joined her. The crowd below was sparse. They hadn’t come back from the bar after the first band had left the stage. The noise of chatting, squealing, laughing and the fog of smoke drifted upwards towards us. The crowd weren’t reacting well at all. They barely acknowledged the band on stage.

  I tried to catch Luke’s eye, but he was concentrating on his performance, strutting around like a lonely parrot as the band behind him desperately tried to generate some energy. It was embarrassing. His college gigs had been much livelier. At those, Luke had been way more animated. Mum was at the far side of the box from me and I could see Luke several times turning towards her, but when I looked to see her reaction, she was chipping away at her nail varnish on one hand with the other. She wasn’t watching the stage at all. Auntie Peggy nudged her and whistled and cheered, but Mum made her disinterest apparent. When the interval came, she said she was too exhausted to stay a moment longer and insisted that Will take her home.

  I had always been aware that Mum favoured Will and me over Luke, but I think she must have loved him in some way. She was furious and frustrated by Luke’s dark moods and the crazy things he’d done as a kid but that’s because he embarrassed her. I think maybe once or twice I remember her saying something fond about him, but never to him. Luke definitely felt unloved by her. He had been closer to Dad. But Dad was the same with all of us. It was the way it was though, and I didn’t question it.

  Will took Auntie Peggy and Mum home in his clapped-out Nissan Micra, leaving Sandra and me on our own in the box with their unfinished glasses of beer and wine. I snaked my hand around her waist and that’s all it took. She responded passionately and I lost my virginit
y on the floor of that box in the Olympia Theatre. We never saw the second half of Luke’s show, but we certainly heard it, and by the end he had turned it around. The audience were stamping their feet in wild adulation, but we were too busy to watch. I had nobody to compare Sandra to in terms of a lover, but she was very generous with her affection and I like to think I satisfied her too. In fact, I know I did because she panted and squealed her head off and the sounds of her desire were thankfully drowned out by the noise from the stage and the crowd below.

  At Sunday lunch the next day, Will went on and on about how ugly Sandra was, how I could do better than her, how embarrassing it was to have her with us last night. I told him to piss off and lied that she was just a friend anyway. ‘I hope so, because if people see you with her, they’re going to think you’re a bigger loser than you already are.’ He then turned to Luke and told him that he couldn’t sing, the band was awful and he needed to go back to college. To take the heat off me, I agreed with that part.

  ‘Luke, seriously, you’re going nowhere. One gig in the Olympia isn’t going to make you a star.’

  ‘But none of you saw the second half,’ he whined, ‘we rocked the place. We’re booked in again, they want us back. Twice a week in January and February, in fact.’

  Mum came in then. She didn’t mention Luke’s concert at all, except to say she wanted her jacket back and that Luke was not allowed to help himself to her wardrobe.

  I saw Sandra in college the following week. She had already moved on to Fintan, but she regaled the student bar with the story of how we had shagged on the floor of the box in the Olympia Theatre. Everyone thought it was brazen and hilarious, and I knew I’d scored brownie points on the social scale. I didn’t have feelings for her especially, but Will’s cruel words about her washed through my head. I slowly detached myself from her circle and, within a few months, we rarely met, apart from in the lecture theatre. I don’t think she noticed that it was deliberate on my part, but I’ll always be grateful to her for ridding me of my wretched virginity in the most exciting way, and for not being ashamed or insecure about it. One day at the end of the last term, she saw me in the corridor and pulled me aside. ‘Brian, no regrets, right? You didn’t think I wanted a relationship, did you?’

  I blushed. ‘No, of course not.’

  ‘Good, because I’ll always remember that as one of my naughtiest nights,’ she laughed.

  One of.

  ‘By the way, I didn’t want to mention it at the time, but your brother is a shithead. Not Luke, Will. He tried to feel me up that night while I was sitting between you and him, and he hadn’t even spoken to me. What a wanker.’

  I couldn’t have agreed more.

  33

  1995

  I was living in Paris, teaching English in a private school, Institut Charles Sorel, in a large townhouse in the sixth arrondissement, not far from the Sorbonne. The job came with rooms at the top of the building, five flights of stairs up, small and sparse, but functional.

  At the age of twenty-four, I’d had to leave Dublin for the sake of my sanity and Paris seemed like the type of place where I might be able to forget everything and start over. I did several interviews to get the job. It was a very exclusive school. I lied on my CV that I had given English classes to the children of the French Ambassador in Dublin. I even forged a reference to support the lie, but my French was good and I’d studied their curriculum and devised my own lesson plan, which impressed them. It was an open-ended contract.

  I thought teaching English to French students might be a bit more meaningful than teaching it to kids who thought that because they already spoke the language, they had no need to read it. The reality was a disappointment, however. Teenagers seem to be the same the world over. To show interest in a subject was to show weakness. Apathy ruled the day. There were one or two bright students in my class, a girl called Arabelle and a boy, Sacha, who were both engaged and attentive. I ended up redesigning my classes for them and ignored the rest as they ignored me. I knew I wasn’t a good teacher: it was something I’d fallen into after college, it wasn’t something I’d actively pursued. I guess I still didn’t know what I wanted to be when I grew up.

  A month into my teaching job, one of the senior teachers retired and the staff were all invited to lunch at La Saucisserie. The restaurant prided itself on being quirky. It was popular and expensive, but the food was nothing extraordinary. Cheese and charcuterie, salads and quiches, the ubiquitous French onion soup. People came for the ambience and the decor. Meals were served on mismatched plates, wine was splashed into large coffee cups. Instead of chairs, there were rescued bench seats from old churches. Shaving mirrors adorned the walls as well as semi-pornographic shots cut out of magazines and slotted into expensive ornate gilt frames.

  The moment I walked in, Conrad caught my eye. I didn’t know who he was, then. I thought he was just a diner like us, but I gradually realized he belonged to the restaurant as he sat at a front table totting up receipts on a calculator.

  It had been fifteen years since my cousin Paul had died. We had been children, but when I thought of him, which was often, I always imagined him as the age I currently was. Conrad, with his big eyes and sandy hair, was exactly how I imagined Paul would be as an adult, except maybe a little older. He looked physically strong, average height, broad shoulders, large square hands. I watched him with fascination, imagining that he must be some kind of reincarnation. I mostly ignored everyone at my table. At one point, Conrad looked over, caught me staring and smiled in acknowledgement. It was an indulgent smile, one from a proprietor to a customer, nothing more, but I was desperate to speak to him, to hear how Paul’s voice might have sounded when broken, to see if his mannerisms were the same. It is said that we all have doppelgängers somewhere in the world. Few people actually get to meet theirs. It was unnerving to think that one would carry on living if the other one died.

  At the end of the meal, I approached him and apologized for staring, told him in my accented French that he looked like my cousin, that they were almost identical. He laughed and responded in English – ‘A handsome fellow then, yes?’ – and he had the same tone in his voice and mischief in his face. It was uncanny.

  ‘Well, yes, though my cousin is dead.’

  His eyes grew sad. ‘I am sorry to hear this.’

  I struggled to explain that it was a long time ago, that Paul had died as a child, that I imagined he might have grown up to be like him.

  I’m not entirely sure he understood what I was saying, and it was for the best because it sounded crazy. Nevertheless, he put out his hand and introduced himself. He invited me to sit down and join him for a glass of pastis. And he raised his glass in a toast: ‘A Paul. Je suis vraiment désolé.’

  I had never toasted Paul before. It hadn’t crossed my mind, but this seemed noble, correct. I smiled at Conrad. ‘Merci.’ We fell into casual conversation then. He told me he had owned this place for a year, after spending some time in the West Village in New York. He ran it with his hands-off partner, André, who worked in investment banking, and I understood immediately that André was not just his business partner but his romantic partner too.

  ‘And you?’ he said. ‘Do you have a wife? A lover?’

  How to explain to a stranger that I had only ever loved my brother’s new wife, and yet the intimacy I had shared with Paul seemed to be present and I told this complete stranger about my love for Susan.

  ‘This will not do,’ he said, tapping a cigarette on a silver cigarette case. ‘Paris is exploding with beautiful women. You must find one, et vite!’

  I laughed. ‘It isn’t so simple when I have to measure up to Frenchmen. You have a reputation, you know.’

  We shook hands and I left, with promises to return. It was an all-day place. I could pop in for a coffee any time, and it became my regular haunt. Conrad and I struck up a friendship and although he could never be Paul, we liked each other well enough, and even when my French colleagues commented
on the fact that Conrad was gay and people might talk, it didn’t bother me. Growing up in a house with a singer/actress at the centre of it, I didn’t find the company of gay men or women strange or unusual.

  I bumbled along in the school for over a year, taught private classes in the summer months. If I had been a better teacher, I might have foreseen the problem, but in Ireland, most of the time, girls went to all-girl schools and were taught by women and nuns, and boys went to all-boy schools and were taught by men and priests – I had never taught a mixed class before coming to Paris. I must admit, I was fascinated by the sexual politics among the teenagers. The girls were much more mature than the boys. They swatted them away like flies most of the time. They were well groomed and expensively accessorized. Over the age of fourteen, they conducted themselves like young women while the boys were children until the day they left school, and perhaps beyond. I know I was.

  Arabelle Grasse was like the rest of the girls in appearance. She was physically developed with the attitude of a thirty-year-old world-weary divorcee, but she was a child. She hung back after class often to ask questions about the texts or her homework. She loved English, she said, and she would apply to study in Cambridge before doing le bac. She was a pretty fifteen-year-old with flawless skin and perfect teeth and long honey-brown hair which hung down to her waist. I wasn’t too familiar with girls’ fashion but although their uniforms were ordinary enough – blue blazer, white shirt, blue skirt – the girls all rolled their skirts up above their knees, they knotted their shirts at the navel and opened enough buttons to reveal cleavage if they had it. I could see how the boys were easily distracted, but they were all children to me.

  Unfortunately, from Arabelle’s point of view I was not a teacher but an object of misplaced affection. It was a teenage crush. Completely irrational, as crushes are. I was not handsome or successful or rich. I did not possess a car or a fine linen jacket. I did not even smoke. When she presented a letter from her mother asking for private tuition that September, I was frankly glad of the opportunity to earn a bit more cash and ignored the fact that Arabelle didn’t need the extra classes. She was well ahead of her peers.