White Lies (5 page)

OD

It was a quarter to seven. Beano was late and I'd already started a game with Pat Doran. ‘Rowdy', we called him, because he was so quiet. He was the only person I knew who apologised before he made a mistake.

I was on a roll. The reds were dropping in fast and the set-up for the black was coming right every time. I was lining up the black again and ready to move on to the colours. Concentrating hard, as much to forget my troubles as to hit a good shot, I bent down low over the cue. Just as I drew back the cue the door burst open.

‘Honey, I'm back!' Beano yelped, a mad leer on his face.

That was supposed to be Jack Nicholson in
The Shining
. The tip of my cue went into the green baize and puckered it. I threw down the cue and made for him. He nipped around to the other side of the table, and for a while we dodged around it like two cartoon characters. I almost had him when he produced the letter and held it out to me.

‘Nance asked me to give you this,' he said. My stomach hit the floor.

Rowdy waited quietly for the game to continue, but I wasn't interested. He pretended to be busy chalking his cue. I went over and sat in the corner and got myself psyched up to open the envelope.

‘Finish the game for me, Beano,' I said.

‘Right! Who's on? Me? Right.'

‘You're on the black,' Rowdy whispered.

The paper was ridiculously childish, but the writing was firm and the contents far from innocent.

Dear OD
,

We don't belong together. I'm not sure if we ever did. We both need to sort ourselves out and since we can't help each other to do that, there's no point in carrying on. Don't try to change my mind, it would only make things worse
.

Nance
.

I kept re-reading it as if, by some miracle, some more lines would appear and explain why she'd come to this conclu sion now. We both knew what I had to sort out, but what was her problem? The mitching from school had some thing to do with it and, now that I thought about it, she'd been in a strange humour for the past few weeks. Was she getting panicky over the exams and maybe thinking she couldn't afford to waste any more time with me? Or had Tom finally got to her and convinced her I was no good for her?

I fixed my rage on Tom. I imagined facing up to him and explaining with my fists what I thought of him. I'd pull out of the Youths team and he'd soon see he couldn't do without me. Which would be playing right into his hands. I shelved that idea.

The last line of the letter seemed to cut off any hope of getting to her. That and my stupid pride. I wouldn't crawl back, not to anyone. Well, so I thought.

Beano had finished the game, managing to get beaten though I was well ahead when I handed over. He came over to me and sprawled himself out on the long bench where I was holed up in the corner.

‘That table is lop-sided,' he declared. ‘And the cushions are dead.'

I rolled the letter into a ball and shoved it in my pocket. I got myself up from the bench and my knee felt stiff from sitting.

‘We're going for a pint,' I said.

‘It's a bit early, OD,' Beano objected.

‘Right,' I told him as I headed for the door, ‘I'm going for a pint.'

He followed me out into Friary Street and had trouble keeping up, I was in such a hurry. When we got to the door of the Galtee Lounge, part of me, the thing the nuns used to tell me in primary school was my guardian angel, was saying, ‘Don't go in.'

I went ahead.

We talked about football all night, going through the endless permutations of what might happen in the League. What if St. Peter's beat Evergreen Celtic the following Saturday and we lost to Cashel? And what if we dropped a point and St. Peter's went on winning and it came down to the last game where a draw would do for them but only a win would be good enough for us? It was all comfortable nonsense, and it would have been fine if I'd left it at that.

I was drinking too quickly and with every pint the Coke in Beano's glass annoyed me more. Beano never drank alcohol and I'd never pushed him to. Until that night. That night I felt like I was drifting away on a slow boat to nowhere and he was on the shore, sober and leaving me to drown alone.

‘Have a drink,' I insisted. ‘Just the one,'

‘I have a drink.'

‘That's not a drink. It's coloured water.'

Then I started grovelling, searching for pity and companionship on my boat.‘Beano,' I pleaded, ‘you know what's after happening between me and Nance. I'm on my own now.'

‘I'm here, aren't I?' Beano said, but I could see I was getting through.

‘It's not the same. I might as well be drinking with … with …' I was trying to think of someone else who didn't drink, ‘with … Doctor Seanie Moran.'

‘Will we play a game of pool?' Beano tried.

‘You're avoiding the question.'

‘You didn't ask me a question,' Beano said innocently.

‘The question is, are you having a pint or are you going to get lost?'

He had two pints. I never thought an albino could get any paler but, as we left the Galtee Lounge, Beano was the colour of death. He was even more unsteady on his feet than I was and the closer we got to De Valera Park, the quieter he got. In a way it was like old times. I was back to taking care of him like when he was younger.

When we reached the gate of his house, he didn't want to go in. He said he wanted to walk some more, but my knee was bothering me again and I needed to lie down so my head would stop spinning. He kept on insisting until I got fed up of it and went home, leaving him standing at the gate like a dead man at the door of Heaven – or Hell.

The streetlight near our house was on the blink again and I had trouble getting the key in the door. Inside, the silence was so complete I went instinctively to Jimmy's room. When I looked in on him, I heard a sudden contented snore as if all was right in his dream world.

As my eyes got used to the dark, I noticed a half-empty glass on his bedside table. I picked up the glass and took a whiff, but it was just water. Which was just as well for him. If it had been whiskey I'd have poured it over his head. I stumbled away in the dark to my bed.

The sleep I hoped for didn't come. My mind searched through the debris of the last few weeks with Nance and picked up the traces of trouble that should have been obvious to me all along. Of course, I only made a kind of drunken sense of them.

Nance, I decided, had been preparing me for the worst. She was withdrawn, not because of some passing mood, but because she was loosening the ties between us. There could be only one reason for that. Not the exams and, I decided, not Tom either. There was someone else involved, another fellow. And if that was the case I wasn't going to get into a sweat over it. I was bigger than all that mush. Like I said before, there was no one I would crawl after. Now I had a reason. There was no one who would crawl after me.

NANCE

Over the next few days I saw a lot of Seanie Moran. Tom was anxious to get through the course with him as quickly as possible so he could concentrate on his own classes. After that first evening Seanie never mentioned school or asked when – or if – I was going back.

It became a nightly ritual. I'd answer the door, take him into the study, talk for a while; later, when they'd finished, I always happened to be around to see him out. We'd talk again and the doorstep conversation went from five min utes the first night to maybe ten the following evening, until by Saturday night of that week we were talking for a good hour.

He was my only contact with the outside world by this time. Tom and May had backed off altogether and, though it was confusing, it was a relief too. With OD gone from the picture, it was hardly surprising that I finally began to drop hints about my problem to Seanie that evening.

I already knew from the look on Tom's face when he'd come in earlier that his team had been beaten by Cashel. If it had been OD on the doorstep we would have been talking football and nothing else. Seanie just mentioned it in passing, adding that he'd had a lousy game.

I brought him around to his decision about medicine again. I'd been building up gradually to this all week. If I could fool myself that I was helping him then it would be easier to accept his help.

‘Are you giving up the Red Cross too?' I asked.

Seanie wasn't pleased with the direction of the conversation.

‘I don't have time for all that now,' he said.

‘I think you're crazy, trying to please your father instead of doing what you really want to do.'

‘So what do I do? “Thanks, Dad, but no thanks for twenty-five years of hard labour”?'

‘Do you really think he did it all for you?'

‘Maybe not, but that's how he sees it,' he said weakly.

I suddenly found myself back in the thick of my own difficulties again. When I asked if Mick Moran had really done it all for Seanie, I immediately thought of Tom and May. Had they done it all for me or just to fill a gap in their own lives? The idea left me feeling used.

Out of nowhere, before I even knew I was going to do it, I found myself saying Heather Kelly's name.

‘I have to find a woman called Heather Kelly. That's the only way I can go back to school.'

Seanie's next question was inevitable. I'd trapped him into it.

‘Who's Heather Kelly?'

Just then, Johnny Regan, the creep I'd given the Guinness shampoo to, passed by the gate. He gave me the usual dirty look, but it quickly changed to a sinister smile. Seanie took one look at Johnny and winced. I felt I had to keep talking before he backed off.

‘She worked with Tom and May in Kenya. I want to meet her.'

‘Wouldn't they tell you where she is?'

‘I'd prefer if they didn't know I was looking for her,' I said.

Something seemed to click in his mind because his eyes narrowed and then widened again.

‘I don't know why you want to find this woman. It's none of my business, but I might be able to help.'

The clouds of those last few days seemed to part for an instant. I was quaking inside, full of expectation – and terror.

‘Last year,' he explained, ‘I entered this essay competition about Third World Development and I asked Tom for some ideas. He put me in touch with this priest, Father O'Brien, who was in Kenya with him. He was very old and I don't think he was very well. Maybe he's … you know, maybe he's not around any more.'

I refused to consider the possibility that the priest was dead.

‘Will you ask him for me?'

‘Sure,' he said. ‘He's in Dublin but I still have his phone number.'

I knew he wanted me to tell him more, but I was afraid that if I did he'd have second thoughts about it.

‘What's the story with OD?' he asked me. ‘Are you still with him?'

I shook my head and, stepping back, eased the door inwards.

‘It's just that …' he began, but I cut him off.

‘Seanie, it's not a good time to … talk about that stuff.'

‘You're picking me up all wrong, Nance,' he said. There was a deep blush beneath his tanned skin. ‘Look, I'll ring you as soon as I talk to him, all right? And Nance?'

‘Yeah?'

‘I'm not … I'm not looking for anything, OK?'

Even though he'd proved himself a nice fellow, I didn't believe him. But I smiled gratefully and went inside.

As I passed through the hallway I caught a glimpse of Tom through the open door of the study. He looked shat tered as he stared out over his PC in the direction of the mantelpiece. Maybe I was wrong, but I thought I knew what he was staring at. A ‘family' photo, taken on my confirmation day. All those long-ago smiles seemed to me like a pretence, where only the child was really fooled. And the child in me was gone.

May was in the kitchen making some of the necklaces and earrings she sold, along with her water-colours, as a side line at the health food shop. I searched through the fridge and the kitchen presses, not looking for anything in par ticular. I wanted to stay in the kitchen and be near her but I wasn't sure why. I poured some muesli into a bowl.

‘We've been talking, Nance,' May said and I waited for her ‘softly, softly' approach at persuading me to begin again.

‘Tom feels that he may have put too much pressure on you. He wants you to know that he never meant to do that.'

I stirred milk into the muesli and spooned some into my mouth to keep myself from getting involved.

‘He wants you – we both want you – to have choices in your life,' she went on. ‘He doesn't want to make those choices for you. He just wants to be sure that when your results come out, you have whatever you need to do the things you want to do.'

I was making myself sick with the muesli, guzzling it down like there was no tomorrow.

‘There are parents out there who are pushing kids into things just to fulfil their own childish ambitions. Whatever you want to do is fine with us, so long as you're happy'. The stodge of muesli had lodged in my stomach. I felt bloated.

‘I'm not happy,' I said.

She was trying desperately to read my eyes but I shad owed them over with a frown of annoyance.

‘It's not school; you're not worried about the exams.'

I didn't answer but she could see I agreed.

‘Is it OD? I know we've never talked about fellas and all that, but I've been through these things in my time. You can tell me.'

I don't know why I was shocked by the realisation that May hadn't always been Tom's wife and had known other fellas, other men even, but I was. And once again, I found myself saying something I hadn't even worked out in my head.

‘I'm not going with OD, I told you already. I'm going with Seanie Moran now.'

‘That's all very sudden,' she said.

‘It's not sudden. Don't tell me Seanie is unsuitable too.'

‘I never said OD was unsuitable, did I?'

‘Tom did.'

‘Tom bent over backwards for OD. It's not his fault that OD didn't want to know.'

‘I don't want to hear about OD,' I said angrily. ‘And I didn't burn my books because of him. Do you take me for a Boyzone groupie or something? My life isn't ruled by fellas and it never will be.'

Then, just as we were edging towards the real story, the phone rang.

‘I'll get it,' I said. I rushed out, beating Tom to the phone by inches.

At the other end of the line, Seanie had to repeat his ‘hello' three or four times before I got my racing heartbeat in check.

‘Seanie, any luck?'

‘You won't believe it, Nance, but …' His voice was flat with disappointment.

‘Don't tell me he's …'

‘No, no, but he's over in England at some kind of reunion. He won't be back until next Wednesday.'

‘I knew something like this would happen,' I said disgustedly.

‘Nance, I'll try again on Wednesday but would you think about going back to school in the meantime?'

I knew it was blackmail and I knew he knew it too. But, I thought, at least he cares enough to be concerned for me. He tried again.

‘It might be a good idea not to be stuck in the house all day. What do you think?'

‘Yeah,' I said and it didn't feel like giving in. ‘I'll go.'

He was slow to react and, in the silence, I sensed his nervousness.

‘Would you like to come for a drive tomorrow … somewhere?'

Seanie was one of the few who drove themselves to our school. The car – a beautifully restored, deep green Morris Minor – wasn't his but he got to use it whenever he wanted. If I went, I'd be telling the world that it was over between me and OD. And with the car horn playing ‘Tubular Bells' there'd be no hiding from anyone.

‘What time will you call?' I asked.

‘If you don't want …'

‘I'll be ready at half two but I'll have to be back by five, all right?'

‘Sure,' he said. ‘No problem. That's great. Half two then.'

‘This doesn't mean we're … ' I began but wasn't sure what to say next.

‘I know … I know what you're saying and it's fine,' he assured me. ‘It's fine with me.'

But he didn't really know what I was saying, because I didn't know myself.