The Stone House (13 page)

‘Education is important,' her father had bellowed. ‘You are not going to end up working as some sort of
shop girl here in Rossmore, flirting with the local Romeos.'

Romy blazed. How in heaven's name had her father managed to guess the precise reason for her wanting to stay and take up a job in O'Sullivan's gift store or Tina's boutique? She would do anything if it meant that she could spend every spare minute of her time with Brian O'Grady, the boy she loved.

‘You are going to university even if I have to drag you there, myself,' he threatened.

Romy was madly and passionately in love with Brian O'Grady! What would her father know about passion and romance, when it had died out between her parents years ago?

Brian was all that mattered to her. He was the only boy who never seemed to mind that she was so tall and skinny, he never teased her about being long and lanky or having wild frizzy light-ginger hair that had a mind of its own. He was inches taller than her with calm blue eyes, a wide strong face and a wicked smile. Half the girls in Rossmore fancied him like mad because he wrote songs and played the guitar in a band called ‘The Underground'. She loved his witty sense of humour and the way he even pretended not to notice the god-awful braces that Dr Collins the local dentist had made her wear for two years. She had known him since she was four years old and they had first sat together in the junior infants' class in Rossmore's small national school. An immediate pair, they understood each other totally. It had broken her heart at eleven when Brian had gone to the local Christian Brothers secondary school and she had joined the rest of the girls in their
hideous wine uniforms at the convent. He began to hang around the town with a gang of fellas, whistling at the girls, chatting them up and playing football for Rossmore's local GAA Club while she stood around street corners eyeing up the boys like the rest of her friends, the two of them joking each other about it.

During the summers she had been banished to Irish College and to Rheims, to learn French, counting the days till she was reunited with him. Meeting up with Brian the minute she got home, they would laugh and talk as if they had never been apart. Alone with him she never felt shy or awkward and could absolutely be herself as they walked down round the harbour and pier.

At sixteen he'd kissed her and the world stood still for those magic fifteen minutes as lips and mouth and tongue explored each other. They had looked at each other afterwards. Imagine finding out you were in love with your best friend. She wanted to shout it from the rooftops, holler it at the top of her voice for everyone to hear, knowing that all her school friends were cracked about him and would be mad jealous. However, something instinctive told her to disguise and hide their burgeoning relationship; she suspected that her parents were unlikely to consider Brian suitable boyfriend material for a Dillon.

On Saturdays and during the holidays he helped out in Lavelle's, the restaurant his mother managed, as money was tight ever since his father had died.

Romy had pleaded with Sheila for some sort of job there too.

‘I'm sorry but we've nothing at the moment,' Sheila O'Grady had replied, noticing the way they stared at each other and how animated her son had become lately around the Dillon girl.

So, instead she had got a Saturday job in O'Sullivan's souvenir and gift shop on the harbour, but was hurt to hear two weeks later that a girl from her school, Aoife O'Connor, was working in Lavelle's. She wondered why Brian's mother suddenly seemed to have taken such a dislike to her, but it didn't matter. She was determined to earn her own money so when she went out with Brian he didn't have to put his hand in his pocket to pay for her. Twice a week they went to the Ormonde cinema or the Lighthouse disco and it wasn't fair to expect him to fork out for her Club Orange and crisps, or burgers and chips. No, she could pay her way.

A few weeks later they had gone to Tramore for the day.

‘Some day, I'll be bringing you somewhere better,' he promised. ‘New York or Paris or Rome. I'm not going to stay in this dump for ever.'

With Brian holding her hand, Romy didn't care where they were as long as they were together. They bought candyfloss and popcorn from the funfair stalls along the seafront, trying their luck in the shooting gallery, and going on the dodgem cars and swing-boats.

In the screaming dark of the ghost train he'd told her he wanted to make love to her, and Romy was certain she wanted it too. They had found a quiet spot hidden from view on the deserted beach. Crazed for each other, doing it for the very first time, Romy clung to him as she felt a wave of utter satisfaction and release rush
through her. She had discovered sex and knew that she would want to do it again and again.

The opportunities were few and far between. One Saturday when her mother and father went to a wedding in Cork and she had the house to herself she phoned in sick to work. Brian threw her teddies and dolls on the floor of her bedroom as they made love, Romy praying they would not be disturbed.

Brian surprised her a few weeks later, announcing he had the key to one of the holiday cottages up round Rossmore Head, that his mother acted as caretaker for.

‘The Sugrues are gone to the South of France for the first three weeks of August,' he told her, brandishing the magic key.

‘Are you sure we can use it?'

‘Cross my heart and swear to die. Mam said if they had only given her a bit more notice she could have sublet it to someone else. Anyway, she hasn't and they won't be down until the twenty-first of the month. We just have to be careful, that's all.'

Romy couldn't believe it. The cottage was small with two bedrooms and a kitchen cum living room that gave a sweeping view of the headland.

‘It's perfect,' she said, flinging herself into his arms and barely able to contain herself as he began to lift off her T-shirt and unzip her jeans.

‘And very private,' she added, repaying the favour.

The three weeks passed in a blur of flesh and wanting and experimenting, Maeve Dillon wondering where her youngest daughter kept disappearing to that summer.

‘Brian, I have to go home to my own bed at night,'
she pleaded, kissing him one last time. ‘Otherwise Mam and Dad will cop on.'

They used their hideaway a few times during the autumn, Brian bringing food and extra blankets as the weather got colder until one day Sheila O'Grady stripped the beds and locked up the house for the winter. Romy didn't give a crap about her final year in school or her exams, only thinking about the time she could be with him.

‘Sister Goretti says you'll fail your exams if you don't study and pay more attention in class,' worried her mother. ‘Maybe we should get you a grind or Kate could help you with your maths and science.'

‘Leave me alone!' she screamed. ‘I'm not like Moya and Kate. I don't want to go to fecking college!'

‘You'll go to college or do some kind of course, and that's all there is to it!' shouted her father. ‘By God, you'll attend to your studies and like your sisters get good marks in the exams. No daughter of mine is going to be known as a dunce!'

Maeve Dillon sighed. Why did Frank have to take on so? He had barely completed second-level education himself and had somehow successfully managed to get Martin Duffy, the local insurance man cum auctioneer to take him on as an apprentice. Frank had learned the ropes of the business from the older man as he drove around the country in his Ford Capri selling life and home insurance to the small business people and farmers in the area. He heard who was sick and ailing, or had no son or daughter to leave their house or farm to, and gradually began to discover his talent for property.
Much was sold on to interested clients but a percentage of the sales became the property of the Duffy Dillon portfolio. Frank had done well, building, developing sites. He was a true entrepreneur. However, as he rose up in the world he'd become fixated on the importance of a good education for the children.

Maeve suspected that the only chink in his armour was his sense of inferiority about his schooling and lack of knowledge in certain areas. She had worked for a while in her father's solicitor's practice, even contemplated studying law but had put all these notions behind her with the birth of her first child, content like all the young mothers of her day to stay home looking after their children. Motherhood agreed with her and she had no regrets about being a wife and mother and homemaker. Frank was a difficult man and it was her job to make things smooth for him, be it the children, friends or business entertaining. She had always hated rows and upsets and wished that Romy hadn't inherited so much of her father's temper and stubbornness.

‘You might enjoy going to Dublin like Moya and Kate,' she soothed, ‘it's not that far away and you'd be home at weekends if that's what you want. Your father and I will still be here, I promise.'

‘I'm not going.'

Maeve sighed to herself. God preserve her from teenage angst and drama. She couldn't remember herself and Vonnie being this bad growing up.

‘Your father only wants what's best for you, pet, though I'd be lost without you and maybe it would be a good thing for your dad and I to have one of you
willing to stay home and look after us in our old age.'

Banging the door, Romy stormed out of the kitchen and up the stairs to her room. The prospect of waiting hand and foot on her father and mother was something she had absolutely no intention of doing.

The Leaving Certificate exams over, Romy planned spending the long summer days with Brian and was devastated to find out in the first week of July that he was going to work with an uncle in London.

‘I thought we were going to spend the summer together,' she complained.

‘I don't know why,' he sighed, running his fingers through his hair, ‘but Mam is set on me going away and has fixed up a job for me with Uncle Kevin on some big building site.'

‘But can't you get her to change her mind? We were supposed to spend the summer together,' she coaxed, reminding him of last year.

‘I know, but it's all arranged, my fare is already booked and paid for. Mam says I'm not spending the summer here and that I have to go. Listen, Romy, it'll only be for eight weeks and the money is great.'

Romy tried not to cry and make a show of herself as she knew money was tight in his family.

‘Brian, promise you love me.'

He nodded, pulling her into his arms.

‘Say it,' she ordered as his hands reached up under her skirt.

‘I love you,' he said, silencing her with a slow deep kiss that went on and on, pulling her body so close to his that they were instantly aroused. She cursed the fact that the holiday cottage was now rented as Brian
in the semi-darkness and quiet of the lane behind Riordan's boat yard pushed and pushed against her, hitching up her denim skirt around her waist as he entered her. Romy gasped, clinging to him. There was no-one like him in the whole world and in only a few weeks' time he would be back with her again, she consoled herself as, putting her jealous fears about English girls aside, she kissed him goodbye.

‘Listen, Romy, before you know it I'll have made lots of money. Maybe when I'm finished you could come over to England and we could go backpacking around Europe or go grape-picking, just get out of here and do something different.'

Romy knew there was zero chance of her parents letting her do that. ‘Just come back home to me,' she said, reminding him of what he'd be missing.

That summer was warm and wet and Romy spent her time selling whipped ice-creams to small bold children and trying to wrap delicate Waterford glass in such a way that it would not shatter or break during the journey to whatever far-flung destination its purchaser came from.

Bored and lonely by September, she couldn't believe it when her results came and she had done way better than she had expected with an A in English, an A in French, and a smattering of Bs and Cs.

‘I always knew you had it in you,' congratulated her mother, kissing her warmly. ‘Just think what you would have got if you'd even bothered to study,' said her father, poring over her marks.

Grateful to the nuns in St Dominic's for her amazing
academic achievement, Romy was finally willing to join the thousands of other students flocking to Dublin, leaving home for third-level education. Her grades ensured a place in University College Dublin to study Arts.

The week before term she had stayed with Kate, sleeping on her couch as she hunted for accommodation; she was lucky to get a place in one of the student apartments on the Belfield campus, sharing with five other students.

She wrote and wrote to Brian, begging him to join her in Dublin, not believing when he told her that he had also got good results and had signed up on an engineering course in London and would work at the weekends as a barman in Fulham to help cover his costs.

‘Kevin and Auntie Mary are putting me up, but I don't have a rich daddy like you,' he joked, ‘so I have to work.'

Romy had reacted like a spoilt child, fighting with him, writing hurt angry words that she never should have used on the daisy-patterned paper she'd bought in Sullivan's. He still wrote and phoned her occasionally but within a few months they had drifted apart.

Deeply hurt, she could not believe it was over. She felt lost in UCD's modern concrete and glass campus, bored by constant lectures in packed lecture halls. Some lecturers were entertaining and enlightening but many were pompous old farts and she loved to raise her hand and ask them a difficult question, speaking in middle English for the fun of it! She yawned through the subtle intricacies of French grammar and concentrated on
reading up on the classics of French literature. Signora Bettina, a tall Italian woman who rolled her dark eyes, was the only one who succeeded in making her fall in love with her country and its language. Romy scribbled her notes wildly and so badly she could barely read them back, trying to make sense of them in the library where she retreated to study. The three girls she knew from Rossmore had got in with a crowd of their own and had begun to exclude her.