Locked Out of Heaven

by Shirley Benton

  “Okay, so,” I said, delighted at the prospect of another good night out.

  Terry, however, wasn’t too pleased when I rang him yesterday morning to tell him I was going away.

  “I was planning something special for us tonight, Holly.”

  “What? You never said!”

  “I wanted to surprise you.”

  “I’m sorry, I didn’t know. Can we reschedule it?”

  “Can’t you just cancel Offaly? Let Cliff go on his own.”

  “I don’t want to cancel it, Terry. I can’t wait to go there.”

  “You’d prefer to go to the house of people you don’t even know than spend the weekend with me?”

  “I’m allowed to have friends, you know! It’s not healthy for us to spend all of our time together.”

  “Why can’t you have female friends like every other girl?”

  “Terry, are you jealous? For God’s sake!”

  I hung up, furious at Terry for making me feel guilty. Damo was the first friend I’d ever had and nobody was going to ruin that for me. I was so annoyed at Terry that I refused to answer his calls before I went down to Offaly.

  As soon as I got on the bus, I forgot all about Terry and our fight. We passed the start of the journey playing a game where you think of a song, then think of another song that begins with the last letter of the first song. Damo and I were brilliant at it, but Cliff was rubbish and left the two of us to it after a while. As we got closer to Offaly, I was like the American tourists I used to see around the city on summer weekends.

  “I’ve never seen so much green in my life!” I said to Damo, who burst into guffaws.

  I was instantly mortified.

  Cliff wasn’t much better.

  “There are hardly any houses around here. Who keeps the shops going and stuff?”

  “Ah, you’re hilarious,” Damo said when he eventually stopped laughing.

  “We’re being serious,” Cliff said.

  I could have killed him. If Damo thought we were messing, great. We must have sounded like a right pair of gimps.

  “Yeah, of course you are. If you keep this up, I’ll have to have a word with my cousin who runs the village checkpoint. He doesn’t let anyone through if he thinks they’re going to disrespect the village.”

  I had to bite my tongue to stop myself from asking him if he was messing. I might have been good at the books, but one thing I wasn’t was streetwise. Ironic when you think about where I grew up, but never hanging around with anyone had taken its toll on my social skills. For the millionth time since I’d met Damo, I couldn’t help thinking how lovely it was to have a friend.

  (I am truly sad, Diary.)

  When we arrived at Damo’s village, his parents were waiting in a car to pick us up.

  “This is Cliff,” Damo said to his mother and father when they got out of the car to greet us.

  Cliff shook hands with them both.

  “And this is Holly.”

  “Lovely to meet you at last,” Damo’s mum, Sallyanne, said. “We hear nothing but Cliff this and Holly that when Damien comes home.”

  I was so chuffed, Diary!

  Damo’s parents ushered us into the car and Sallyanne talked non-stop all the way home. Their house was a sprawling bungalow surrounded by land. It was like a beacon of light in the darkness as we approached. Damo’s dad, Cyril, brought our bags in from the boot while Sallyanne shooed us into the house amid talk of tea and soda bread. Within five minutes I felt like I lived there.

  Damo’s sister arrived home in the middle of our tea. She breezed in with rosy cheeks and smelling fresh.

  “Hi,” she said, visibly appraising Cliff and smiling widely at me. “I’m Sammy. Sorry I couldn’t be here when you arrived, but I was at badminton.”

  She sat down at the table and grabbed a buttered slice of soda bread. She was the healthiest-looking girl I’d ever seen in my life – all big white teeth and clear skin.

  “Are you coming out tonight?” Damo asked Sammy.

  She nodded.

  “What are you wearing?” she asked me.

  “I’m not sure. I brought a few different skirts and tops.”

  Over the summer, Cliff had given me a few quid here and there to build up my wardrobe.

  “Ooh, can I have a look through your stuff?” Sammy said. “There isn’t much to choose from in the shops around here.”

  “And hardly anyone living here to keep them going,” Damo said.

  Cliff thumped him on the arm while I grinned and everyone else wondered what the joke was.

  “Yeah, sure,” I said.

  She was around the same height and build as me, just more athletic.

  As soon as we finished our bread, Sammy dragged me up to her room to rifle through my clothes. If someone had told me before I came to Offaly that someone I’d just met would be fingering my precious new things, I’d have stamped on the floor in a temper fit until I’d disappeared through it like Rumpelstiltskin. But this was different. I’d only just met Sammy but I felt like I’d always known her, just like I had when I met Damo.

  I looked around the room as I opened my bag and pulled out everything I’d brought. The walls were covered with posters of Blur and The Smashing Pumpkins. Every conceivable surface except the bed was hidden under stacks of magazines. Sammy had a hi-fi system on a shelf in the corner of the room, and the rest of the shelf was groaning under the weight of hundreds of tapes and a stack of CDs.

  “You look through my wardrobe there while I have a nose through your clothes,” Sammy said.

  I couldn’t believe the amount of stuff she had, Diary. So much for there not being much to buy around here! The wardrobe rail was so packed with dresses, skirts and little tops that I could barely move the hangers across to look at everything.

  “I love this,” I said, pulling a strappy white dress out of Sammy’s wardrobe. “It’s so unusual.”

  “It doesn’t suit me at all. You try it on.”

  “Oh no. White doesn’t suit me. I’m too pale.”

  “I think it would. You’re stick thin and so petite, and your hair is so blonde it’ll offset your pale skin. Go on, try it!”

  “Wow,” Sammy said when I’d whipped it on. “It looks like it was made for you!”

  I didn’t want to agree and sound big-headed, but Sammy was right. God, I’d never seen myself look so good in anything. The waist of the dress was so nipped-in that it made me look like the fictional animated character Jessica Rabbit. My long curly blonde hair looked brighter than ever as it fell in tumbles against the shoulders of the dress. Even my freckles seemed to dim a bit. I suddenly felt amazing.

  “Keep it if you want,” Sammy said. “I never wear it.”

  “What? I can’t keep it! I wouldn’t mind borrowing it tonight, but I’ll give it back.”

  “No way. Take it or I’ll get Damien to bring it back to Dublin. Imagine if one of his friends saw it in his bag – I can hear the rumours already!”

  “I can’t see him as a cross-dresser somehow,” I said, smiling at the thought.

  “Nah. He’d never get anything to fit him – he’s built like a missile. It’s not fair that he got all the height in the family and I’m a short-arse, but that’s life. Right, where’s your make-up bag?”

  “I don’t have one.”

  “What? Did you forget it?”

  “No, I just don’t wear make-up.”

  “Why in the world not?”

  “Oh, thanks. Do I really need it that badly?”

  “No, no! But the point is that your face is perfect for make-up!” She came over and grabbed me by the chin. “Look at those eyelashes. They’d practically reach your hairline with a bit of mascara. I can’t believe you’ve been wasting them! Sit down.” She put her hands on my shoulders and gently pushed me onto the bed while she reached for a gigantic make-up bag that was hidden behind some magazines. “I dunno . . . and they say we’re backwards down here!”

  Sammy tipped the contents
of her bag onto the bed, then produced about five different brushes that all looked the same to me but apparently did different things. Sammy gave me a handheld mirror fifteen minutes later, a big smug smile on her face.

  “Finished!”

  “Wow,” I said.

  I couldn’t believe the person staring back at me was actually me. My eyes looked humongous, my cheekbones looked like you could cut your hand on them and my freckles had almost entirely disappeared.

  “How the hell did you do that?”

  “Practice,” she said. “Now, I need to get myself sorted. I want to catch myself a snog from a dude called Tommy Whelan tonight and I have to look amazing. Can I wear your cream skirt and red top?”

  So, Diary, later that night, we all piled into Damo’s dad’s car and he drove us into the village. A bus would pass through the village at eleven to pick up anyone who wanted to go to the nearest nightclub, a place called The Anchor. Cyril dropped us off at a place called Hannigans.

  “Don’t be scared of all the old fossils in here,” Sammy said to me as we walked in the front door. “We’ll be going out to the pool room anyway, where all the young people hang out. We’re only going in the front way because Damien wants to show off his new friends.”

  Every head in the place turned towards us as we walked in. As promised, everyone there looked Victor Meldrew-esque.

  “Out the back, fast,” Sammy hissed. “They might turn violent if they don’t like the look of you.”

  She was joking. I think.

  We got just as many stares when we went out to the back, but the perpetrators were much younger and more awkward-looking. You could practically smell the hormones in the air.

  Damo directed Cliff to the bar while Sammy marched across the room as if she owned it, beckoning me to follow. All the guys who were standing around the pool table gawked at us as we walked past them. Sammy made her way over to a gaggle of giggling girls and introduced me to them. I offered to get us drinks while Sammy caught up with her friends then made my way up to where Damo and Cliff were surveying the crowd over their freshly purchased pints.

  “See anyone you like?” I said to the lads.

  “Maybe,” Damo said, smiling.

  “How about you, Cliff?”

  “Gimme a chance! I’m only in the door!”

  “Well, there’s a girl over by the juke box in a green top and blue jeans gawking at us, and I don’t think it’s me she’s interested in.”

  “This’ll be the craic for the whole night now,” Damo said. “Everyone will be trying to suss out who you two are. I give it five minutes before someone comes up to you.”

  Damo was right. I brought our drinks back to Sammy and asked her to look after mine while I went to the ladies’ toilet. I wasn’t halfway across the room before a guy in an oversized black T-shirt and baggy blue jeans stopped me and asked me what my name was. My bladder was bursting by the time I got rid of him. But then as I was waiting outside the only women’s bathroom (or at least I hoped that was what it was – it had a pair of knickers painted on the door) a tall guy with a stripy T-shirt and torn denim jeans asked me who I was. They weren’t shy around here, that was for sure.

  When it was time for us to leave to get the bus, I hadn’t even finished one drink from all the talking I’d been doing. As we walked out, Sammy was being chatted up by some skinny guy, Cliff was talking to a girl with pale skin and elaborate eye make-up – I wasn’t sure if he was being chatted up or doing the chatting – and Damo was on his own. I saw the guy with the black T-shirt. coming my way out of the corner of my eye – he’d been trying to make eye contact with me all night after our initial chat – so I walked over to Damo and linked his arm.

  “Save me from the man in black,” I muttered.

  Damo laughed. “Graham looks keen all right. That’s what you get now for looking so well tonight. You look like a girl in the promotional posters for the James Bond film The Living Daylights. Ever seen it? We had one of those posters up in our local video shop for years.”

  “I think I remember it all right, but wasn’t that a negligee she was wearing?”

  “Maybe it was. You look just like her, anyway. You’d make a great Bond girl. Quick, let’s move on. Graham is looking over again.”

  “Oh, God. I’m sure he’s a nice guy and all, but I don’t want to lead him up the garden path when I’m going out with Terry.” I was still annoyed with Terry but that didn’t change the fact that I had to be faithful to him. “Anyway, I just want to have fun with you and Sammy. She’s brilliant, isn’t she?”

  “I suppose if she’s not your sister, she probably is.”

  “We’ll have to take her to the culchie club if she moves to Dublin! She said she’s applied for Arts in Trinity College Dublin.”

  “You’re really into that club now, aren’t you? Cliff told me you were never one for going out before.”

  Bloody Cliff and his big mouth! I swear, Diary, I could kick him sometimes.

  “I just kept it local, that’s all.”

  Which wasn’t a lie. If staying in my house all year round isn’t keeping it local, I don’t know what is.

  I sat beside Damo on the bus to get away from Graham.

  “So, are you coming to Féile with Cliff and me?”

  “That music festival in Tipperary? I didn’t know Cliff was going.”

  “I have a spare ticket if you’re interested.”

  “I can’t afford it,” I said immediately.

  I hadn’t a bean to my name other than the cash that Cliff had given me for this weekend’s activities. The poor guy had pretty much had his wage packet reduced by 50 per cent since he started inviting me to places. I’d been trying to get a job all summer, but there was nothing going.

  “Sure, we can call it a long-term loan. You can pay me back when you graduate from college. What is it you’ve applied for again?”

  “Addiction studies in Trinity College Dublin.”

  I’d submitted a change-of-mind form to the Central Applications Office for university courses after Ricky’s death. I know now what I want to do and it’s not commerce.

  “What made you choose addiction studies?”

  “Damo, I think you’re just asking me that so that you can ignore what I said about not taking the ticket. I know what you’re like – far too generous for your own good. But really, just give it to Sammy or something, okay? Thanks anyway, though.”

  “All right, no problem. But seriously, tell me about your course. Was it something you always wanted to do?”

  I knew I’d made a weird face as I thought about the safest way to answer his question without telling him what had happened. The light in the bus wasn’t great and I hoped he wouldn’t notice, but he did.

  “Are you okay? I’m sorry – have I said something wrong?”

  “No, no.” I shook my head. “Sorry. I thought I was going to yawn there.”

  We made small talk for the rest of the journey, but something had just hit me – something so obvious that I couldn’t believe I hadn’t thought it through before. I was always going to be asked why I chose my course. If I wasn’t willing to share the details of my private life, then what exactly was I going to say? It wasn’t the kind of course someone would apply for on a whim. It was one that was chosen by people who had a damn good reason to choose it. For all of my brains when it came to exams, I wasn’t great at seeing what was right under my nose.

  I was relieved to get to the nightclub, even though Graham sidled up to me the second I alighted from the bus and tried to cosy up to me in the queue. Cliff was behind us snogging the pale girl and Sammy was holding court with a group of guys further back. Damo cut in on Graham’s conversation with me every time Graham opened his mouth, but Graham wasn’t giving up easily, even though I kept dropping references to my boyfriend into the conversation.

  As soon as we got inside, Damo grabbed my arm.

  “We can get supper with these tickets,” he said. “If you have any hope of
escaping from Graham until it gets busier in here, this is your best option. Of course, I can always tell him where to go if you’d prefer? Trust me, I’d like to.”

  “No.”

  The last thing I wanted was to get Damo involved in any sort of trouble when he’d been kind enough to bring us onto his turf. It surely wouldn’t do his garda rep any good either to be involved in any kind of scrapping after having a few drinks.

  “Let’s grab something to eat, so, and fetch a few drinks on the way.”

  As it turned out, we didn’t leave the eating area all night. Once we got chatting, we just couldn’t stop. Damo had endless gossip about the students he and Cliff lived with. Essentially, there were a number of couples in the house who were all cheating on each other in a furiously complicated pattern and one of them was also mad after Cliff.

  I wasn’t surprised, really. Cliff was the looker in our family. Poor Ricky always became instantly invisible at school whenever Cliff came up to talk to him. I knew it bothered Ricky, but what could any of us do about it? He had to accept that Cliff was better looking, in the same way that Cliff had to accept that Ricky was way brainier than him.

  Not that his brains mattered in the end anyway, Diary, when he went off and did the most stupid thing imaginable.

  “Penny for them,” Damo said when we fell quiet. “You seem lost in thought there.”

  “Mmm,” I said non-committedly.

  “You actually seem to spend a lot of time thinking in general. I’d love to know what’s going on in your head sometimes.”

  “It’s not all that interesting,” I said. If only he knew.

  “I don’t know about that. I think you’re very interesting,” Damo said. “You’re not like any other girl I’ve ever met.”

  “I think one of me in the world is enough,” I said as lightly as possible. I looked at my watch. “Crikey! we’ve been in here all night. We should go outside and find the guys.”

  “I’m sure they’ll probably just be in a corner sucking face and won’t want to be disturbed,” Damo said, but I walked off anyway and waited for him to follow.

  I had a feeling the conversation might get back to addiction studies if we stayed talking any longer and I hadn’t worked out my official line for that yet.