City Girl (12 page)

Her brothers, unwittingly taking their cue from their father, treated Caroline as though she was a surrogate mother, expecting their meals when they were hungry and their clothes to be washed
and ironed for them. They would give her the odd fiver and think they were great. It wasn’t that they didn’t love her; in their own way they were protective of her. It was simply that
they just didn’t think of her as a person. To them she was their sister Caroline who was shy and fat and could be a bit of an embarrassment when their mates were around. And so, quietly,
uncomplainingly, Caroline took care of the three men in her family and kept their shabby but homely dormer bungalow in Marino as clean and tidy as possible, as well as attending school and trying
to study for her exams.

To compensate for everything that was lacking in her life, Caroline ate. For the loss of her mother, for the demands made upon her, for her lack of self-esteem, for the miserable time she had at
school, for everything that was wrong with her life, the list was endless. The only joy in her life was food. She ate huge breakfasts, she made herself double-decker sandwiches for lunch, she would
supplement this with crisps and chocolate during school breaks, and then when she got home she would have a big dinner. The more unhappy she became the more she ate and the stones piled on. Until
Martin O’Brien’s unforgettable insults she had been the fattest and unhappiest teenager in the world. Then Devlin Delaney had come to her rescue and taken her in tow.

The smell of sizzling bacon brought Caroline out of her reverie and quickly and efficiently she dished up the grill, placed it on a tray already loaded with cereal and juice and set off for the
bedroom. A sleepy tousled Devlin greeted her.

Caroline looked with supreme envy upon her friend, her blond hair tumbling sensually around her tanned shoulders, small perfectly formed breasts holding up a pretty negligee. To be as slim and
as self-assured as Devlin, who was after all two years younger than her, was her secret dream. It had never ceased to amaze her that Devlin, who was Declan’s girlfriend, should have been the
slightest bit interested in being friends with the fat dowdy person she had been. It was thanks to Devlin that she had got so far and lost so much weight.

Declan had met her at a rugby club dance. He came home raving about this beautiful blonde he had ‘got off with’ and Caroline had listened to his delighted ravings with envy. Oh to be
the object of someone’s desire! This blond bombshell obviously had everything that Caroline lacked: good looks, good figure, dazzling personality. She felt an uncharacteristic dislike for
this unknown paragon. When Declan brought Devlin home Caroline’s heart sank. She
was
beautiful! No doubt she was stand-offish as well. After all wasn’t her father a bank
manager, and didn’t they live in Foxrock?

Nothing could have been further from the truth. There wasn’t an ounce of stand-offishness about Devlin. It was impossible for Caroline to be shy with the bubbling chatty younger girl.

Declan and Devlin had been going to a local dance themselves the night Caroline had overheard Martin’s hurtful remarks. Devlin had been staying the night and had overheard Caroline sobbing
into her pillow. Horrified at the other girl’s misery, she had kindly but firmly got to the bottom of it and decided, as Caroline, pathetically red-eyed and embarrassed at her behaviour,
tried to pretend that she didn’t really care, that she was going to do something about Caroline Stacey and the way her family treated her.

The first thing she had done was to persuade Caroline to enrol in Unislim. ‘Let’s do it, Caroline, I’ve heard some of the girls in my class talking about it, it’s just
what we need to keep us fit,’ she had said tactfully. It had been a turning point in Caroline’s life. Never would she forget her first class when, dressed in a grey and pink tracksuit,
selected by Devlin, and looking like a baby elephant, she had with the utmost reluctance climbed on the scales. Scarlet, she had heard Maureen, the attractive good-humoured woman who ran the class
say kindly but firmly as the needle shot up to fourteen and a half stone: ‘Now Caroline, all this . . .’ she took a wad of fat and gave it a little pinch, ‘is not good for you.
You’re an intelligent attractive girl with your whole life ahead of you. Starting now. Together we can do it.’

Caroline was full of resolve as she accepted her ‘Quik-Loss’ Diet Plan, her
Recipe for Successful Slimming
book and her attendance card which stated her disgusting present
weight of fourteen and a half stones. Her target weight was eight and a half stone and Caroline decided grimly that if it was the only thing she ever did in her life she was going to reach it.
After Maureen’s humorous but commonsense talk – ‘bread is a time bomb, girls’ and ‘let’s put years of mindless eating behind us and re-educate ourselves,’
had come the exercise class that Caroline had been dreading. Puffing and panting and bending and twisting her ungainly body this way and that she was convinced that all eyes were upon her. Her
heart sank lower and lower in mortification and she vowed she was not going to stay for the exercises any more. Lots of people just weighed in, left after the talk and did the exercises at
home.

‘You’ll do no such thing, Caroline Stacey,’ exclaimed Devlin when Caroline informed her of her plan after their class.

‘Believe me, Caro, no-one is even thinking about you. Everybody is too concerned about doing the exercises themselves and anyway there are some girls there who are much heavier than you,
so stop that nonsense!’

It was true of course, she saw herself, the next class she took. It had been marvellous – she had stuck firmly to her ‘Quik-Loss’ plan for the week, as instructed, despite
ravenous hunger pains, headaches and a constantly gurgling stomach. She went to bed early so she wouldn’t be tempted in the kitchen and had the most satisfying dreams about cream cakes and
chips and homemade scones dripping with butter, jam and cream. But she kept to her diet for the whole week and consequently floated along to her class a whole eight pounds lighter.

Maureen had been delighted for her. ‘An excellent start, Caroline; you’re well on the way,’ she beamed at her as Caroline stood on the scales and proudly saw her weight-loss
noted.

Devlin had come with her. ‘I might as well. I need the exercise,’ she said gaily when Caroline had asked diffidently whether she was going to go every week or not. She had been
delighted at the younger girl’s response; it was much easier to have company than to go alone. As she and Devlin sat waiting for the huge queue to be weighed in and listened to
Maureen’s witticisms, Caroline had viewed her fellow classmates – housewives, working girls, elderly women, teenagers, and yes, some of them heavier than her, she realized that Devlin
had spoken the truth. Everyone was too concerned about their own weight loss or gain to be staring at her, but nevertheless there was a kind of comradeship about the class that warmed her and made
her feel part of a group in a way she never had before. As the weeks flew by and she steadily lost weight by eating properly for the first time in years, she began to talk to people in the group,
making conversation spontaneously and not sitting shyly until someone else spoke first. It had been great and she really came to enjoy her weekly class.

Devlin smiled with pleasure at the sight and smell of her breakfast. ‘You pet! What a treat. Did you weigh yourself this morning?’ her friend enquired sleepily, interrupting
Caroline’s musings.

‘Four pounds gone!’ Caroline said, doing a little twirl of delight. Usually she was quite restrained but she couldn’t help looking in the mirror and seeing the new delightful
curve of her waist, the firmness of a much-reduced bosom. Energetically she started her exercises, pushing herself to the limit. When she first started she had been breathless after two minutes.
Now she could exercise for an hour and just be pleasantly puffed. Thoughts of the look on the Unmentionable One’s face when she next met him, spurred her on, even though she hadn’t seen
him for ages.

For the next six months she slimmed and exercised, concealing her increasing slenderness under the old bulky clothes. Devlin and Declan stopped dating by mutual agreement, although they remained
friends, but the younger girl kept in contact with Caroline, encouraging her on the path of self-improvement. In return Caroline coached Devlin, who was studying for her Leaving Certificate, in the
intricacies of sine, cosine and tan, although it was a hard struggle, Devlin being deeply unimpressed by the delights of elementary trigonometry.

It was strange how they had become friends, so different in personality as they were and with such completely different lifestyles. Yet it seemed to Caroline that for all her out-going ways and
many ‘friends,’ Devlin was a little lonely. She was an only child and at least Caroline had the boys. Athough they weren’t much use it was better than having no-one in the house
when she came home, as often happened with Devlin. Her mother and father always seemed to be out.

Caroline stayed over in Devlin’s house occasionally and had met Mrs Delaney. Mrs Delaney was gracious, elegant and yet it struck Caroline that there wasn’t an ounce of motherliness
in her. Not like her own mother who had been so warm and loving and full of fun. What fun the teenage Caroline had enjoyed with her own mother on their weekly forays into town which usually ended
with a trip to the pictures and then a meal in one of O’Connell Street’s many restaurants, where they would have Caroline’s then favourite meal, mixed grill and chips. Devlin and
her mother never went anywhere together, a fact that amazed Caroline until she met Lydia Delaney. As the bond of friendship grew between the girls, Devlin confided in Caroline about Lydia’s
drinking and sometimes when things got really bad at home, Devlin would stay over at Caroline’s for a night or two until the worst was over.

Caroline loved the nights Devlin stayed. She would always make a special effort to have the house neat and tidy, shoving the boys’ shirts into their wardrobes out of sight, hiding her
father’s multitude of textbooks under the sofa, hastily spraying air freshener around when she heard the door bell, to camouflage the heavy smell of her father’s pipe smoke which seemed
to invade every nook and cranny. Compared to her friend’s luxurious abode, the Stacey house was functional and low key but Devlin never seemed to notice, and after a while it ceased to bother
Caroline.

It was shortly after they became friends that Caroline began her Arts degree out in Belfield. Sitting on the number ten bus as it left O’Connell Street for the journey to the campus, she
felt half-excited, half-afraid. Around her sat other young students chattering excitedly, looking forward to the new adventure ahead of them. Why couldn’t she be like them, she thought in
despair. Why was every new experience such a big trauma for her? Some of the girls on the bus had come from all over the country and were setting up home in strange flats and digs. How she envied
their desire for freedom, their eager cutting of the ties that bound them to home. If she had to leave the security of her home and come up to a strange new city and find her way around she’d
die of fright, she knew it.

The first few weeks on campus had been so strange and unnerving. Compared to secondary school where every hour was mapped out, the loose unstructured style of University was a completely new
experience. Along with hundreds of other young freshers Caroline wondered if she would ever find her way around the sprawling complex that made up University College Dublin, where she would remain
in search of knowledge for the next three years. It was the proverbial melting pot, and from the big glass-walled restaurant Caroline viewed her peers each day with a faintly incredulous envy. Some
of the way-out clothes worn so individualistically by many of the students amazed her. How wonderful it must be, she mused, as she saw one girl wearing purple ski pants and a vivid orange shirt, to
have such confidence in yourself that you could carry off such an outrageous get-up. She would watch the eager clusters that gathered around the notice boards deciding which society to join. The
Dramsoc and Literary and Historical societies were by far the most popular but she couldn’t gather enough courage to join either of these.

The black tie debating contests fascinated her. Imagine to be able to stand up in front of a vast crowded theatre full of people and speak with fluent conviction on whatever topic was under
debate! It was her dream, and often on the long traffic-jammed ride out to Belfield she would imagine herself in full flow making the winning speech, graciously accepting the loud applause of her
audience. A few times she joined her classmates for a drink, after lectures, in the campus bar. The experience left her miserable as everyone else seemed to know someone. The music was loud and
unintelligible, the smell of tobacco and pot permeated her hair and clothes and the battle to get to the bar through the jam of tightly packed bodies never seemed worth the effort. At the approach
of closing time mention of parties in so and so’s pad would filter down along the groups of laughing relaxed young people and a mass exodus would begin to the exciting, faintly seedy area of
flat-land in Rathmines. She had gone to a few, but the thought of getting drunk or stoned or laid terrified her and she was always on edge and never able to really enjoy herself and eventually she
stopped going. And so she went to her lectures in the huge impersonal theatres and the social life and crack of the college passed her by. There were times when Devlin despaired of her.

‘Honestly Caro! your life is one long drudge. Out to college in the morning, classes all day, home to cook for your dad and the boys, study all night. You’re wasting your
youth!’ she would exclaim in exasperation. She would not let a little thing like studying for the Leaving Cert interrupt her own social life.

‘You’re different, Dev.’ Caroline would try and make excuses. ‘Anyway Dad would have a fit if I was out every night and besides, someone has to do the
housework.’