The Woman Who Walked Into Doors (3 page)

Carmel admits it: she loved Courtown. She was old enough to go to the dances. I remember her climbing into bed.

—What was it like?

—Brilliant.

—What was the music like?

—Brilliant.

—Any fellas?

—Mind your own business.

Everyone could hear everything in the caravan.

—Go to sleep over there.

Denise has her own caravan now. They have a site near Courtown. They even go there in the winter. I'd love that, somewhere to go. She's never offered; I've never asked. It's not Denise; it's her husband, Harry. He's a bit of a creep. Even Denise thinks that; it all comes out when we're out together.

—Show us your diddies! Paula! Paula!

That was Roger and his pals behind the hedge; probably not Roger himself because he knew I could kill him if I wanted to.

—Show us your diddies!

I kept walking. I made sure I didn't look anywhere near the hedge.

I had my breasts in primary school, in sixth class. Only two of us in the class had them, me and Fiona. We hung around together for months, leaving everyone else out, just because of that — we had breasts. I was dead proud of them after I'd got over my mammy looking at me. It was after my bath on Saturday night; I was standing on the towel, shaking, pretending I was cold. Mammy was rinsing Denise's hair. I started to dry myself. I never rubbed the towel all over me or up and down my back; I hated that. I did one arm first, then the other, then a leg, all the way down to the foot, then the other leg. Each bit had to be dry before I went on to another bit. I never rushed. I saw Mammy looking at me, at my chest. Then at me, my face. I couldn't understand her expression. I thought she was going to lose her temper. She looked away when she saw me looking back at her. Then the part that killed me: she was blushing. She was panicking, it seemed like, the way she dried Denise's hair; she made Denise cry. Because of me. She didn't look at me again.

—Stop fussing, she said to Denise. —You're alright.

She left us in the bathroom.

—She's a bitch for doing that, said Denise. —Isn't she?

—Yeah, I said. —She didn't mean it.

—She did.

—She didn't.

—It still hurt.

I'll never forget it, the look on my mammy's face. It left me feeling like I'd done something terrible to her; I'd hurt her badly and I didn't know how, just that I'd done it.

It was better a few days later.

—Now, she said. —We're going into town, the two of us.

Just the two of us, no sisters, no brothers; I loved it. She didn't tell me why but it didn't matter. I knew from her mood that it wasn't the dentist or doctor or anything bad. I remember one thing that happened on the way into town. I was looking out the bus window at a woman slapping her little young lad. I turned to show the woman to Mammy and it was raining on the other side of the road. I looked back and it was still dry on the woman's side. She'd stopped hitting the child. I didn't understand it then. I thought it was some sort of a miracle or sign; it started to worry me. Then Mammy told me that it was only a sun shower. I can still make myself feel the way I felt when I saw it; it's like missing a last step in the dark and walking into nothing.

We went to Clery's and she bought me two bras. Then she took me into a restaurant and she got me a jam doughnut and a Fanta. She told me not to squirt the bits of doughnut from my mouth into the Fanta because only kids did that and I wasn't a kid any more.

—And you've a bra to prove it, she said; she whispered it, leaned into me, the first time she ever did anything like that. She nudged me. She laughed nicely at me blushing, then I laughed. She looked at me as I shoved the last lump of the doughnut into my mouth.

—The first time ever, she said. —No jam on your clothes. It's all happening.

She was grand when my period came; she explained it all before it happened. The facts of life, they were called in those days.
Those days;
Jesus. She kept me home from school and gave me all the facts. We sat in the kitchen drinking tea. Why I'd bleed, what to do, how long it would last, the pain if there was any. She told me not to worry about any mess, there was nothing that couldn't be cleaned.

—Be ready, she said. —That's our motto.

She gave me a note for school on Monday that said I'd been too sick to go back on Friday after dinner. But I told my friends what had really happened. I was walking a new way now. The Facts of Life. We used to giggle about them; we tried to find them in our dictionaries. We knew it was about things going into holes, and babies and blood. But we never mentioned the blood. We concentrated on the things and the holes. We couldn't imagine it, not really. I still can't sometimes, four children and more than twenty years of sex later. We giggled and laughed and we were scared. Now, in the school yard, I was the first person to have really heard them, the Facts of Life. I'd got there first. The first time I'd ever won anything. It was one of the best things ever to happen to me. The girls standing around me, pretending they knew all about it but some of them looking at me with their mouths open. I said the word Penis like I'd said Desk or Road. Erect. Menstruation. Vagina. Tampon. Headache. Great words; I frightened the shite out of them.

It's one of the only bad things I can remember from my childhood, that expression on my mammy's face in the bathroom, like I'd done something absolutely dreadful, terrible to her. I understand it now though, perfectly. It was just bad timing, mat was all; she hadn't wanted me to see that look, I'm sure of that — I'd just been too quick for her. She'd been robbed — that was what she'd thought when she saw my breasts starting; her little girl had been taken from her. That was exactly how I felt when it happened with Nicola, before I copped on and made sure that I kept it to myself. I had a good cry by myself; it was really, really upsetting, thinking of so much of Nicola's life being over, but at the same time I knew that I was just being an eejit. I brought Nicola into town too. Not for a bra, though; the blood came before the body in her case. We went to an over-15s film; I wanted her to feel grown up. Dirty Dancing. I chose it because I thought it would have some nice sex in it; the camera going down the bodies — from the side, no hair — maybe the woman on top for a bit, no grunting; love. She loved it, and so did I. I bought her the tape with all the songs from the film on it. She'd seen it all before, of course, on telly and in videos but this was different, me and her sitting in the dark watching it on the big screen. I nudged her every time Patrick Swayze came on and, after a while, she started nudging me back.

We were never that relaxed again, not since.

Gerard was the Guard's name.

—Gerard, Missis Spencer, he told me when I asked him.

—I'm Paula, I said.

—Yes, he said. —They told me.

—Well, they were right, I said.

He was confused, probably wondering if I was joking or not, probably thinking that it wasn't right for me to be joking at a time like this. He ate his biscuit the way a kid does, quickly so that he'd be offered another one. He was slower with the second one.

—Where're you from, Gerard? I asked him.

—Dublin, he said.

—What part?

—Churchtown, he said.

—I don't know there, I said.

—It's nice, he said.

—Nicer than here I'd say, Gerard, is it?

—It's alright, he said.

—D'you live with your parents?

—Yes.

—Rent-free.

—No, he said. —I give her two hundred and thirty a month.

I nodded.

He'd forgotten he was a Guard. He'd forgotten to take his cap off. He told me all about his family. His father sold fish to the French; his mammy didn't do much. His sister was in college becoming a vet.

—She's a bit of a genius, he said.

His twin brother was in Trinity becoming something else.

—You didn't go to college yourself, Gerard?

—No, he said.

He blushed.

—It's not for everybody, I said.

—He's a ride, isn't he?

I remember it — that's the first thing I ever heard about Charlo Spencer, before I ever saw him. We called every fella that wasn't ugly a ride. A man or a boy had to be in a really bad way, deformed or something, if he didn't get called a ride by us. Even some of our fathers were rides. It was okay for friends to call other friends' fathers rides — if they were good-looking enough. No one ever called my father a ride. It think it was Deirdre said that Charlo was a ride and all the others agreed with her. Deirdre could stare back at fellas in a way that none of the rest of us could manage. It was 1973, coming up to Christmas. I know that because I was working in H. Williams and I'd spent all that day stacking tins of biscuits into huge piles at the end of three of the aisles. I was knackered after it; I remember. I'd tried to open one of the tins; I pulled away some of the Sellotape that kept the lid on but the tape kept coming and coming, there was miles of it. And there was a customer looking at me, a woman. I can remember her. She had glasses that were a bit crooked on her head and her coat was nice; ordinary, black but it looked expensive and warm. I put the tape back on. I could feel my skin burning. I did it slowly so that it looked like something I was supposed to be doing. (It's years since I blushed.) I remember all these things together. The biscuits, the tape, Charlo Spencer is a ride — they all happened on the same day. I know. It was cold too. We were outside The Mint. The type of cold that made you want to go to the toilet, to keep your feet moving and your hands up your sleeves. I think that's why I remember the woman's coat. I was freezing. There wasn't room in any of our houses for all of us. And parents were different then, I think. My parents wouldn't have let us all into the house even if there had been space, if I'd been the only girl and I'd had a room to myself.

He
was
a ride. It was the best way to describe him, from the first time I heard of him to the last time I saw him. He wasn't gorgeous. There was never anything gorgeous about him. When we made love the first time in the field when we were drunk, especially me, and I didn't really know what was happening, only his weight and wanting to get sick; I felt terrible after it, scared and soggy, guilty and sore. It would have helped if he'd been gorgeous, like Robert Redford or Lee Majors. They'd have picked me up and carried me home; they wouldn't have fucked me in a field in the first place, not one of the fields where I came from that weren't really fields at all, just bits left over after the building was finished. Charlo stood up.

—Fuckin' cold.

He wiped his prick on the inside of his bomber jacket, I swear to God he did. I didn't really know what he was doing until the day after when I was calm and thinking about it and making it nice. Gorgeous men didn't do that kind of thing. The grass had been wet. I could smell some sort of animal dirt. Robert Redford would have brought a picnic rug.

He was a ride, he was eighteen, he had brown eyes, he used to be a skinhead, he'd been up in court three times and in St Pat's once. I found out these things that night outside The Mint. He'd a scar where he'd been stabbed —

—On his belly.

—No, his arm.

—It's his belly, said Fiona.

—How do
you
know? said Deirdre.

—Well, if you must know, said Fee, —he's in the same team as my cousin and he seen it. In the shower.

We loved that.

—The shower!

I'd never even seen a shower back then. A shower was like a water bed or a jacuzzi now — there was something rich and filthy about it.

—Imagine tha', girls.

—Soap, soap, soap!

—And a face-cloth.

Deirdre started washing herself, under her arms — she looked around — then between her legs.

—Jesus, look at her!

—Next time, Fee, said Tina, —ask your cousin how long his mickey is.

—Jee-sus!

So I had my identikit of him before I ever saw him; a brown-eyed ride with scars and a record and his mickey thrown over his shoulder. That was how I saw him and that was exactly what I got.

The doctor never looked at me. He studied parts of me but he never saw all of me. He never looked at my eyes. Drink, he said to himself. I could see his nose moving, taking in the smell, deciding.

The house was empty. Nicola was at work. (John Paul was gone.) Leanne was at school. Jack was next door playing with their young one. She's three years older than him but she loves bossing him around and he loves it too. I had the place to myself. Gerard the Garda was gone. A nice poor young fella.

I wasn't surprised. I'd always half-expected it. Charlo was dead.

He'd been out of the house for more than a year. I'd thrown him out. Out the door. But we'd never done anything about it, got properly separated. I never got a barring order, didn't need one. He was still my husband. That was why Gerard had called. I was still Mrs Spencer.

I made another cup of tea — because that's what you do. I didn't go for the vodka. I decided not to. I put an extra spoon of sugar into my tea.

Charlo was dead.

I picked up the crumbs that Gerard had left behind and put them into my mouth. I don't eat biscuits much. I usually don't have the money for them. I always feel a bit queasy after them.

I could taste the extra sugar.

I still loved him. I'd loved him before I even met him and I never stopped. The minute I saw him, before I saw his face properly, I knew what being in love was. It was dreadful. I was already jealous, already expecting him to leave me, nearly wanting him to be a bastard; I hadn't even heard his voice yet. I loved him when I was throwing him out. I loved him when Gerard rang the bell. I love him now.

Then the shock.

My stomach fell under the table. My ankles ached; my heart charged. All of a sudden. Gerard had told me that Charlo was dead but he hadn't said how. I'd never asked him. I didn't know how he'd died.

I couldn't pick up the cup. I didn't want it. The table was holding me. I had to stand up. I had to know. I wanted people in the house. I wanted noise. I had to find out. It was vital. He wasn't dead yet. I had to know. No tears yet. No tears. He wasn't dead. Anything could have happened. My mouth opened; a scratch came out. I had to do something. I had to find out. I didn't know how. I had to do something. I had to move.