Ordinary miracles, p.11
Ordinary Miracles, page 11
I travel the mile into Bray like a sleep-walker. ‘Well at least that’s settled,’ I think. ‘At least Charlie’s out of the picture now. Not that he was ever really in it.’ There is a tiny sense of relief, but I still feel like I’ve just got off that boat train from Holyhead.
‘Why on earth am I feeling like this?’ I agonise dejectedly. ‘I was the one who kept saying it was great we had this wonderful friendship. But it isn’t wonderful any more. And it isn’t just a friendship either. How has this stuff snuck up on me? And just when I was being so careful.’ I kick a stone on the road morosely. It doesn’t move very far.
In Bray I buy two newspapers and catch a bus. I go to the top deck and look through the ‘Flats for Rent’ – marking the promising ones with a blue biro. There’s still some conservatory money in my account, along with what’s left of my recent earnings. I’ve got to find something half decent. A bedsit in Rathmines really would be the last straw. Bruce will just have to help if necessary. If I don’t go back to him we’re really going to have to get a divorce and make some financial agreement. The thought of solicitors makes me wince.
‘How on earth has it all come to this?’ I think. ‘How have I come to be sitting here, thinking these thoughts?’
Bruce frequently remarked upon my tendency to stand back from my life and look at it with a kind of vague curiosity. He said I distanced myself from the world – from him – as it suited me. He said I sometimes swam along with the river of life and then, suddenly, decided to cling to a branch for a while. But watching the water as it swirled by me only made me more frightened, he said. He said I would be better off back in there with everyone else.
I’m beginning to notice a pattern to this disconnection and I think the common denominator is probably pain. I had the first glimmers of it when my mother gave away my bicycle. Just gave it away because somebody else wanted it and it was a bit too small. I felt like she was giving me away too. As though she’d grown tired of my childhood. I haven’t thought about that bicycle for years. Once it was gone I forgot it. Pretended I never wanted it anyway. Just like Jamie. When he went I was distraught for a while – he was my first love. Then I decided it was all for the best. But Jamie muddled up my arithmetic for ever. I’d thought one and one made two, but ever since they’ve just made one and one.
The perverse thing is I fell in love with Jamie because I thought he’d help me open up. I was seventeen. I felt like I owned a big house but only lived in some of the rooms. But when Jamie looked at me that day, with piercing blue eyes that didn’t look away – that forced me to look back – I felt like he saw all of me. The whole building. We were in a cafe. I went there most days. It was beside the college where I was doing a commercial course.
I didn’t see him for some weeks after that. Then one day I saw him again. Caught him looking at me in a way that made me quiver. He was staring at me across the sea of faces. He was holding a sandwich in mid-air. As his teeth paused over the parsley a chill ran down my spine. What did he want from me?
And then he smiled.
It was a nice smile. An inward smile. A witty city smile at the world. And as his eyes lit up I knew this man meant business. This man who walked through my rooms and wouldn’t let me hide. This man who watched, and liked what he saw.
We were kindred spirits – I knew that suddenly. There was a touch of hidden sadness to him. Of unplumbed depths. I would stroll through his unlit rooms too – flicking switches – laughing kindly. We would fall madly and beautifully in love in a wonderfully mysterious way.
But not just yet.
Truth to tell the thought of all this passion made me slightly phobic. To have so many hopes – dreams – riding on just one person. A person who, let’s face it, I didn’t know in the conventional sense, made me walk into that café like a wanted woman. I didn’t look up or sideways as I ate my macaroni cheese or the same fish dish with a hundred names. It was one of the cafe’s little tricks. One of life’s little tricks too. Love – how on earth did one know if one had found it? But he was different. I wanted to believe that. I wanted to believe he really was Seafood Mornay and not just the same flaked haddock disguised in lumpy sauce. I longed for him so much that just seeing him in the distance made me want to run in the opposite direction.
Things came to a head at Anne’s party. I saw him across the room talking to her. How did Anne know him? No one had said he was coming. And he’d seen me. ‘Oh God!’ I thought, ‘I’ll have to run away.’ Run across the moors and the marshes, even though my parents’ house was only down the road.
I was reading rather a lot of Charlotte Brontë at the time.
‘Maybe he’ll run after me,’ I thought. ‘Maybe he’ll grapple with me warmly, passionately, his firm manly thighs pressed against mine. Maybe he’ll say “Still, still my beauty. Surrender my darling. Let go into my arms.”’
But I didn’t run away. I stayed at the other side of the room. And they snuck up on me from behind.
‘Jasmine, there’s someone I’d like you to meet,’ Anne said as she tapped me on my shoulder. I swung around. ‘Jamie – Jasmine – Jasmine – Jamie,’ she said. Then she smiled innocently and disappeared. I learned later that Jamie had seen Anne with me in the café and asked for an introduction.
Silence followed that introduction. A silence that was so electric, so full of the unspoken, I was sure people would soon turn and stare. I looked up, and for a mesmerising moment met Jamie’s sea blue eyes. I swam into them, as if dragged by a current, and then pulled myself away. I was out of my depth. The whirring in my head felt like a helicopter. If I didn’t act soon I would be lost. I opened my mouth, and then I closed it. When I opened it again I said ‘I’m sorry, but I have to go.’
A smoochy song was playing as I pushed my way past the couples. ‘Hey wait!’ Jamie called out – and I started to run. ‘Hey – wait!’ He was yelling now. What should I do? Where should I go? With a sigh of relief I saw the open bathroom door.
‘I’m right of course,’ I thought as I sat in my skirt on the toilet seat. ‘Absolutely right. A woman can only take a fantasy so far, and then the fever has to fade – burn itself out. He’s clearly unbalanced – shouting after me like that. He’s a desperate man.’
As I sat on that toilet it seemed clear that part of me came from the wrong side of town. It was full of strange talk and loud lipstick. But I couldn’t go around throbbing and palpitating like Lady Chatterley. If I did that I’d never master Gregg shorthand.
My dilemma was making me hot and sticky. I removed Anne’s body spray from a shelf and squirted ‘Dynamique’ under my arms. A woman had to wise up – I saw that now. Otherwise she’d have ‘ants in her pants and an itchin’ round her heart’…like Aunt Bobs used to say. It was almost certainly a quote and probably American. Aunt Bobs developed a certain fondness for jazz in her later years.
I stood up and flushed the toilet. I ran the taps and spat and gargled for good measure. I’d been in there five minutes. People were knocking at the door.
‘He must be gone now,’ I thought, staring at a bottle of Badedas. He was right outside the loo.
‘Hey wait! Wait a minute!’ he called out. I ran upstairs for my coat.
There were a mass of coats on Anne’s bed. I dived into them searching for my Afghan – the coat that my mother said smelt like a yak had slept on it in a dank Himalayan shed. He came in. My knees felt like jelly. I wanted to plunge past him and down the stairs – but I wasn’t sure I’d make it. I wanted to dive under the bed until he was gone. But he probably wouldn’t go.
He moved closer and held something out to me.
‘What’s that?’ I asked edgily.
He smiled. ‘It’s your handbag,’ he said. ‘You left your handbag downstairs.’
At first my giggling was just nervous. A release of tension. Then it turned to laughter, along with his own. We spluttered and hiccupped with mirth – and in my case embarrassment. And when we stopped I wasn’t frightened of him any more. That’s how we started – me and Jamie. I feel foolish remembering it now.
And I feel foolish wishing I was one of the young girls who are getting off this bus, giggling, full of Saturday. I watch them heading home up avenues, clutching their early morning purchases. The bus is travelling through a leafy part of town.
I want to be young again – to be cradled in my father’s arms. I want him to say ‘There, there. You didn’t know any better.’ I want to have inexperience as my excuse.
People have been creatures I’ve coped with for so long now I can barely bring myself to hope that it will ever be any different. Most of the time I don’t know what they’re up to. Even with Susan I sometimes feel I’m negotiating some maze that has no entrance and no exit…just a strange muddled place with huge holes I must not step into. Holes covered with grass so I cannot see them. I can only feel the earth give way and then the fall. And as I do I hear carefree laughter in the distance.
‘I’d hate to be a royal,’ a woman is announcing to a friend in the seat in front of me. She makes it sound as if being a royal were once, somehow, an option. ‘I simply couldn’t stand all that prying and publicity.’
‘Are you all right Jazz?’
Only one person calls me Jazz. I look up and see the bright concerned face of Richard MacReamoin, former adult literacy student. He has two gold earrings in his right earlobe and a long blond ponytail.
‘Oh, hi, Richard. I’m – I’m fine – I was just day-dreaming.’
‘You’re hunched up there like a learner driver. What’s up?’
‘Oh, nothing much. Anyway now you can cheer me up.’
He sits down beside me. ‘Why do you need to be cheered up?’
‘It’s a rather long story.’
‘Well, just give me the headlines.’
And I do.
‘Wow!’ Richard says as I finish. ‘You’ve been through a lot.’
‘Yes, I suppose I have.’ I suddenly feel more cheerful.
Then Richard hands me a slab of chocolate. As I munch it I remember I haven’t had any breakfast and it is now almost lunch time.
‘I’m working at Burger King at the moment. I’ve decided to study graphic design at night classes,’ Richard reveals.
‘Hey, that’s great news. I still have that card you drew for me. It’s really good.’
‘Was that the one of the pig flying over the rainbow?’
‘Yes.’
‘’Cos you like pigs. Right?’
‘Right.’
Richard tells me how he went to the library last Saturday and took out a book on Gauguin.
‘Just left stockbroking and fucked off to Tahiti. Great, isn’t it?’
‘I’m sure his wife was a bit surprised.’
Richard starts on about oils and watercolours versus acrylics then and as I listen I wish Dad was here with us. Dad taught adult literacy too. He was a born teacher who believed in his pupils long before they believed in themselves. Dad would enjoy this.
Maybe he is enjoying it.
‘You’re day-dreaming again.’ Richard is looking at me.
‘Sorry, Richard. I was thinking about my Dad. He died last year.’
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t know.’ He squeezes my shoulder gently. ‘Were you close?’
‘Yes. He was a bit odd, like me. For example he used to keep bees because he was frightened of them. He thought it was character forming, or something.’
‘Very Protestant.’
‘As a kid I used to have to check that he had his bee-keeping gear on right. It was white and rather theatrical. And there was this strange hat with a kind of veil that made him look like an astronaut. I had to check that there were no holes where a bee might get in. He had a smoke box too.’
‘A what?’
‘A little box that puffed out smoke. Bees don’t like smoke.’
‘I didn’t know that.’
I’m beginning to giggle. The memory of my father’s intrepid trek across the lawn to the hives attired in his weird white suit and clutching his smoke box always does this to me.
‘The funny thing is’ – I’m gasping with laughter now and Richard is laughing at me laughing. ‘The funny thing is no matter how many times I checked that suit a bee always got in. A little while after he reached the hives he’d nearly always come streaking and shrieking back across the lawn waving his arms.’
‘Did you ever get any honey?’
‘Oh yes. Loads.’
‘That’s cool. He sounds nice.’
‘He was.’
Richard has to get off at the next stop. We’ve swapped phone numbers in case he hears of a flat. Just before he gets up he leans over and kisses my cheek.
‘You should do some more teaching. You were great.’
‘Thanks. Maybe I will when I’ve sorted things out a bit.’
He squeezes my hand. ‘Thanks Jazz. You helped me a lot.’ He gets up to leave.
‘Maybe see you in Tahiti sometime,’ I smile after him.
He’s so different now from the insecure, defensive young man I met all those years ago. Just a little help, a little trust, that’s all he needed.
The bus is getting close to town now. I’m ravenous. I’m going to go into a café and have fried egg and tomato and baked beans and piles of chips. I’m not going to let despair land splat in my mind this afternoon – like tomato sauce after a misjudged thump.
It seems to me the best thing I can do this afternoon is try to swim with the current.
Just swim along and not think much at all.
Chapter 15
I’d forgotten gin can make your face numb, but my face feels rather numb now. I’ve somehow become attached to the Atlanta Delegation who are attending an international conference on industrial waste. One of them – a woman called April – approached me when I was sending a text message. She wanted to know where she and some of her fellow delegates could hear live traditional music in Dublin.
I’m frequently approached by strangers. If I stand for any length of time in a public place someone is sure to tell me that their son’s girlfriend has become pregnant or that their dog has strayed. Only this afternoon I had a long conversation with a woman in a café who seemed to think I could help get her daughter into PR. A distressed young man even grabbed my hand once on the Bakerloo Line. As he did this he told me that it was his birthday, only everyone seemed to have forgotten this fact. Given my own sensitivity on the subject of birthdays, I did not pull my hand away. I knew that birthdays were only part of his problem but I didn’t dare broach all the others.
The sweat gathered between our palms as the train sped through Finchley Road, Swiss Cottage and St John’s Wood. I decided the terminus of my empathy would be Baker Street. I got off at Baker Street. Only he did too. As he followed me along the platform I wondered what on earth he wanted from me. Whereas he had seemed sad before, suddenly he seemed sinister. I ran up the escalator and into the street. I hailed a taxi and slumped into it with relief.
Back at the hotel Bruce informed me that I had made a serious error of judgement. He said London was not a place in which to hold a stranger’s hand. He said he didn’t believe it was the man’s birthday anyway. He said the man had probably made that bit up because he knew a sucker when he saw one.
In comparison to that man the Atlanta Delegation seem a very carefree bunch. In fact it would be fair to say I need them much more than they need me. I need an excuse to delay my return to Charlie’s house and the Atlanta Delegation have provided it. Since I saw that strange woman in Charlie’s bed this morning I’ve felt I have no home.
When April asked me about where to hear live traditional music, I said I’d show her and her friends the way to a particular pub. I said I was about to head in that direction anyway. Actually I wasn’t about to head in that direction. I had no direction in mind.
When we reached the pub the Atlanta Delegation asked me to join them. And so here I am four gin and tonics later, disorientated and talking with a slight Gone With the Wind drawl. It’s almost impossible to hear what anyone is saying because of the crowd and traditional music. This is just as well because for the last ten minutes I’ve been telling a man called William – I know this from his badge – about my visualised life in the Mediterranean. He nods every so often. Occasionally he cranes forward and I have to bellow words such as ‘Alpes Maritimes’ into his ear.
I’m sitting on a tall stool. A bearded German man beside me is standing. He’s cradling his half-pint of Guinness reverentially as he listens to the fiddles and bodhrán. It is clear that he feels himself to be part of some mystical experience. He’s poised and waiting for it to happen. It probably will too.
Tonight I wish I was from Stuttgart or Atlanta and visiting this place for the first time. I wish I was legitimately foreign and didn’t just feel that way.
I also feel knackered. I made many phone calls today and saw numerous flats. The cheap ones were full of lino and the fetid lingerings of grilled lamb chops. ‘And this is the kitchen,’ the owners usually said with bravado – pointing towards a forlorn corner of the sitting room in which a cooker and sink seemed to cower. I don’t know why I bothered to look at them, because the despondency of the hallways said quite enough.
The brighter, nicer places tended to be flats I’d have to share because I couldn’t afford them on my own. Some already had people in them who assessed my suitability and said they’d ring back. I don’t think they will ring back. I’m much older than most of them, though one girl – Bella – seemed quite taken with me. She had style, did Bella. She was completely dressed in black and her sitting-room was an unusual shade of pink. ‘Vaginal pink dearie,’ she said, when I commented upon the décor. ‘I’ve got a bottle of wine open somewhere – let’s have some.’
I found Bella’s quirky self-assurance quite bracing, but I doubt if I could hack it as her and Nigel’s flat-mate. Nigel lives there too. The flat was quite big, so we could all have got away from each other. But one would have had to live several houses away to escape the sound from Nigel’s hi-fi. He was playing it in his room as Bella and I spoke. The thud from the bass sounded like a herd of wild beasts lumbering over an African plain. Even with ear-plugs the vibrations would have been unsettling.
