Ordinary Miracles (19 page)

It’s Saturday morning. I’ve got the day off so I can’t go
in to work. But I don’t want to stay here and watch them
mooning over each other. Maybe I should just go out and walk around for a while. I feel like Chicken Licken did in
one of Katie’s childhood books. What made Chicken Licken
so irresistibly entertaining to my four-year-old daughter was
his firm belief that the sky was falling down.

Charlie’s house feels cold and furtive suddenly. I walk into
the kitchen. If I’m quick I can have some breakfast before
they do. I don’t feel like eating. I feel a bit woozy actually,
but it’s important to remember to eat. I’ve learned that lately.
Only suddenly the woman comes in and says ‘Hi there!’ as
if I should be pleased to see her. She wants to know where
the Barleycup is kept. She’s not wearing a bra under her
T-shirt. She pads around languorously, her long cotton skirt
swaying gently. She’s barefooted. Barefooted and brazen it
seems to me.

 

‘You must be Jasmine,’ she says as I wonder what to do with the toast I’ve just made. I wish I hadn’t. That toast
implies that I’m just about to eat, but I don’t think I can eat
it now. What I’d really like to do is throw it at her sweet,
calm face. I’ve seen that face somewhere before. It was the
face in the nude photos that fell out of the box when I was
clearing Sarah’s room. It’s older now, but still very pretty,
and tanned.

‘Yes, I am Jasmine,’ I reply. I say it firmly, as though the
matter requires assertion.

‘And I’m Naomi.’ She’s got an Australian accent. She holds
out her hand.

I shake it quickly and then I turn to my toast. I spread
sunflower margarine and marmalade on it and then stare at it – as though I’ve just added the finishing touches to
an abstract painting. That’s what this morning’s become –
one of those strange canvases covered with wheelmarks and
blobs and daubs and dashes. It must make sense to someone.
It must make sense to Charlie.

I know he’s been receiving phone calls from a woman with
an Australian accent – this woman. I know she’s been here
before and used a mug – she’s wearing that light pink lipstick
now too. I suppose I should have guessed something like this
might happen. I’m amazed that I’m so surprised.

I’ve got that cold, damp feeling that comes when you can’t cry. Naomi is studying me curiously. Waiting for me to speak.

‘Do you work in radio?’ I say at last.

‘No. Why do you ask?’

I remember all the chirpy voices determined to turn Dublin
bay into the Bay Area.

‘Your accent sounds Australian. A lot of Australians work
in radio here.’

‘Oh, do they?’

‘Yes they do.’

‘Actually I’m a singer.’

Oh dear God, she’s going to turn out to be famous too.

‘Really? What’s your full name?’

‘Naomi Spencer.’

I’m relieved to realise I’ve never heard of her.

‘You probably haven’t heard of me. I don’t perform much
over here.’

I don’t reply. Normally, when a performer I’ve never heard
of says his or her name I say ‘Ah yes’. It’s a nice, neutral response that implies that the name might just possibly ring a distant bell. I’ve found it very helpful at my own dinner
parties. But this time I say nothing.

‘And what do you do?’ Naomi is stirring her Barleycup,
to which she adds some soya milk.

I really can’t bring myself to mention the sanitary towel
with the revolutionary flap.

‘A bit of this and that,’ I say. ‘I freelance mainly.’

One of the nice things I’ve learned since I left Bruce is that when someone asks you something you don’t have to go into
detail. I used to. I suppose I hoped that by unravelling, like
wool, the circuitous pathways that formed my life before
them, they would somehow provide a sort of retrospective
map. ‘This is what you did,’ they might say. ‘And this is why.’

But after I left Bruce I received so much conflicting advice and admonitions from friends and relatives that I learned how
to retreat into the discretion of my own silence. I used to fear
silence. I read somewhere that one’s own silence is something one can never live up to. Now I don’t care. What other people
make of it is really up to them.

‘Would you like some more toast?’ asks Naomi. She’s m
aking some for herself now. I suppose I should have made
it for her. Where’s Charlie? That’s what I want to know.

‘Where’s Charlie?’ I ask.

‘He’s gone out to the studios for half an hour. He’ll be back soon.’

Suddenly I know I must leave this house before he arrives
back. I don’t want to see him. If I see him I might hit him and I don’t think he’d be too pleased. I’m suddenly feeling
incredibly angry. I should get a tennis racket and thump my bed with it. I read somewhere that Princess Diana found this
very therapeutic at times. Or I could use Charlie’s saxophone.
Bash it against the wall until it fell into smithereens. I feel a
flame of satisfaction at the thought.

I get up, leaving my toast untouched. ‘I must go,’ I say.

‘Oh, that’s a pity. I thought we might have a nice chat,’ she
says. ‘Charlie’s told me so much about you. I’m sorry you
didn’t know I was staying. It was all rather last minute.’

‘I’m sure it was,’ I think. ‘These things often are.’ But what I say is ‘Are you staying long?’ It comes out like an accusation.

‘No,’ she says. ‘I’ll probably go this afternoon.’

‘Well, bye then. We’ll probably meet again.’ I exit stage
right, as Bruce might say. Then I have a moment of remorse.
It’s not her fault – how was she to know? I peer back into
the kitchen.

‘There’s some freshly squeezed orange juice in the fridge,’
I announce.

‘Oh, thank you.’ She beams with relief. ‘I’ll get some.’

Charlie opens the front door just as I’m about to leave. I
look down and try to push my way past him.

‘Hello, Jasmine,’ he says cautiously. He’s studying me. He
looks concerned.

‘Hello, Charlie,’ I reply and, since he won’t move out of
the way, I give him a sharp kick on his right ankle.

‘Ow!’ he bellows.

‘What’s happened? Are you all right?’ Naomi calls from
the kitchen.

I slam the door and head on down the driveway. The
sunshine seems almost perverse given my leaden mood.

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
m
e 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 th
at 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?