May 2019, Clooneven
Jessie
An hour had passed since Jessie had been wrenched from Ger Dillane’s easy company, and every minute yielded another tough question.
‘And you thought you’d get away with it?’ said Lorna, patent navy stilettos clickety-clacking on their parents’ kitchen floor. ‘Like, did you think the man was stupid or something? Because take it from me, Jessie, stupid people rarely get to own property portfolios.’
‘To be honest, I didn’t do a whole lot of thinking. After the TV thing, I kind of panicked.’
‘Could you not have spoken to him?’ said her father, from the other end of the table. ‘Could you not have explained the situation you’d found yourself in? I’m sure you could have come to an arrangement.’
Jessie wished her parents weren’t there. Handling Lorna was one thing. Lorna saw life as a profit-and-loss sheet. She didn’t take Jessie’s failings personally. Also, she tended to act like she was playing a scene in a secondary-school pantomime. She did what the audience expected, subtlety wasn’t part of her repertoire, and she didn’t necessarily mean everything she said.
Their parents were different. They were emotionally involved.
‘I was nervous,’ she said, shifting in her chair, ‘and I made a mistake.’
Click-clack. Lorna did another lap of the kitchen. She appeared to crackle, as if her movements were generating electricity. ‘You owe him six thousand euro. He was always going to track you down.’
‘Five thousand six hundred. And that’s pushing it. I haven’t been there for the past three weeks.’
‘Oh, for fuck’s sake,’ said her sister, drawing a wince from their mother. ‘This isn’t the time for pedantry. You did a runner owing the man four months’ rent. You also owe the ESB money, the gas and the broadband, so six grand’s a conservative estimate. You’re lucky he didn’t set the guards on you.’
Jessie had a hunch that Dan O’Doherty wouldn’t want the police involved in his affairs. Her former landlord wasn’t overly keen on forms or paper trails. She kept this thought to herself. She was in enough trouble without throwing out theories she couldn’t prove.
‘When did you split up with Phelim?’ asked her mother.
‘January.’
The twenty-fourth of January, to be precise. The day was marked on her brain. Despite their topsy-turvy history, she’d known the relationship was over.
Click clack. ‘And did he move out straight away?’ said Lorna.
‘We’d January’s rent paid, so there was nothing stopping him. He gathered up his gear and went to a friend’s place.’
Not to his best friend’s place, obviously. Or, to be more accurate, his former best friend.
‘Please sit down, Lorna,’ said their mother. ‘Those shoes will ruin the floor.’ She turned to Jessie. ‘When did you last see him?’
‘But you’ve broken up before,’ said her father.
‘It’s different this time.’
Oisín McNeill made it different. While Phelim had been away with colleagues from the advertising agency where he worked, Jessie had slept with his friend, Oisín. It hadn’t been planned. They’d bumped into each other, gone for a drink, and ended up in bed.
Afterwards, they’d sworn each other to secrecy. It had been fun, they said, but it wouldn’t happen again. It did. They’d spent the next two months looking for – and finding – opportunities to meet. By the time they agreed that it honestly, truly, couldn’t happen again, it was too late. There was something about them, a residue of sex that marked them out as different. Phelim tackled her. She confessed, and he left.
Before leaving, he told her the truth about herself. They’d been together since they were twenty-four, so there was plenty to tell. She was entertaining but not as entertaining as she thought. She was talented, but the world was full of talented people. She was self-centred, self-indulgent. She’d squandered opportunities that should have gone to other, more deserving, people. He’d loved her for years, but he’d grown up and needed a grown-up relationship. Oh, and Oisín’s girlfriend was pregnant. Did she know that? Did she even care?
(No, she hadn’t known. And of course she cared. The information brought bile to her mouth. Four months later, she was still thinking about it.)
Obviously, she said none of this to her sister and parents. In the family-friendly version of the split, she and Phelim had simply grown apart.
‘What I don’t get,’ said Lorna, who’d joined them at the table, ‘is why you didn’t move out and find somewhere more affordable.’
That was hard to explain, especially to Lorna, who viewed procrastination as the eighth deadly sin. No matter that Jessie’s relationship with Phelim had already been in its death throes, she had been flattened by his departure. That his words were spoken in anger didn’t make them untrue. He’d waved her shortcomings in front of her, and she hadn’t been able to argue.
In the self-help-manual version of life, this would have forced her into a radical rethink. Instead, it had knocked her into a stupor where even a straightforward task, like interviewing Hollie Garland, had felt arduous. Dealing with Dan O’Doherty and finding somewhere new to live had been beyond her. She’d frittered away the modest amount of money she did have on new clothes and nights out. She’d kidded herself that she was presenting a positive face to the world and that this was the best way to start over.
‘I should’ve found a smaller flat,’ she said, ‘only I kept putting it off. I did look at a couple of places, but they were unbelievably dingy. And I suppose I was a bit . . . a bit down.’
She was slow to use the word ‘depressed’. It was thrown around too easily. Yet there had been days when her head had been packed with sawdust and she’d felt physically and mentally incapable of doing anything productive. She’d sat in the apartment counting her regrets and asking why she was so given to self-sabotage.
‘Yes,’ said Lorna, ‘so down you were able to go out on the lash and then appear on television.’
Their mother cleared her throat. ‘How did you get away without paying rent for four months? Did you lie to your landlord?’
‘Phelim had always handled the payment, and I gave my share to him. So when the money stopped arriving in Dan O’Doherty’s account, he got my number from Phelim. I managed to string him along for a few weeks. Then I stopped answering his calls and messages. And finally . . . I disappeared.’
‘Why didn’t he call around to the flat?’
‘He lives in Spain.’
‘You must have known he’d catch up with you at some stage,’ said her father.
‘I guess I shoved it to the back of my mind.’
That was the truth. Dan O’Doherty had been towards the bottom of a catalogue of worries. She’d obsessed about what she and Phelim had shared: attraction, intimacy, conversation and, middle-aged as it might sound, companionship. Like all couples, they’d had in-jokes, phrases and customs. She’d also realised that, even though the relationship had grown stale, it had insulated her from loneliness.
‘Where’s your stuff?’ asked Lorna.
‘Down the corridor in my room.’
‘No, I mean the rest of your belongings. You’ve got to have more than two bags.’
‘I left a few bits and bobs with my friend Shona, and gave everything else to a couple of charity shops.’
Lorna’s eyes roamed the ceiling.
With hindsight, Jessie feared she’d been too impulsive with her donations to Oxfam and the St Vincent de Paul. She’d abandoned her favourite little black dress on the grounds that it had also been Phelim’s favourite, and she’d discarded an expensive suede skirt because it reminded her of Oisín.
‘Could you not have stayed with Shona or one of your other friends?’ said her father.
‘I didn’t want people to know I wasn’t coping.’
Her mother spoke next, the weariness of her tone more wounding than Lorna’s pyrotechnics. ‘I’m disappointed,’ she said. ‘The television show was pure silliness, but this was dishonest. Poor Mr O’Doherty, what must he think of us? And I know it’s what parents always say, but I thought we’d raised you to be better than that. Isn’t that right, Denis?’
Her father nodded.
‘How are you going to pay him back?’ asked Lorna. ‘I take it you’ve got savings?’
Jessie swallowed. ‘Not really.’
‘You’re nearly thirty years old. Were you not saving for a deposit?’
‘God, Lorna, do you not listen to the news? I live in Dublin. Even if we’d both saved every cent we earned and eaten nothing apart from porridge, we couldn’t have afforded a house. Well, maybe we could. But it would have been out in the sticks somewhere.’
‘Other people manage. Mind you, they’re not going through a never-ending adolescence.’
‘It must be great to have all the answers. If you’d ever moved further than five minutes from home, you’d learn that everything’s not as simple as you think.’
‘Where I live is irrelevant. We’re talking about you.’
Their father slapped the table. ‘Come on now, girls. Falling out isn’t going to solve anything.’
‘Sorry, Dad,’ said Lorna, ‘but Jessie needs to hear this.’ She paused and leant back in her chair. ‘Anyway, I have a suggestion.’
‘Go on,’ said Jessie, who found she couldn’t look Lorna in the eye. She focused on her multicoloured necklace. The square beads reminded her of a child’s toy bricks. She was annoyed with herself for rising to Lorna’s goading. She’d said too much. She was always saying too much.
‘Between us, Mam, Dad and I can pay Mr O’Doherty what you owe him. And you can pay us back by working in the Seashell Café for the rest of the season. I’m down a worker, and I’m sure you could do the job. You’ve worked in a café before.’
‘You’re not serious?’
‘Why wouldn’t I be?’
‘Because I’m not staying here all summer. I’m going back to Dublin.’
Lorna gave her parents a look that said, You talk to her.
It occurred to Jessie that her sister had been toying with this idea all along. Now she had an opportunity to act. After all, Jessie was the perfect employee. She had neither children nor a social life.
‘I’m afraid I agree with Lorna,’ said her mother. ‘I’m not saying you shouldn’t go back to Dublin at some stage, but you’ve got to sort yourself out first.’
‘We’ll pay the landlord what you owe him,’ added her father, ‘and we’ll pay the other bills too. Your sister’s right, though. It’s not our debt.’
Her mother nodded. ‘We’ll expect you to pay us back. And I really do think you should ring Mr O’Doherty and apologise.’
Jessie looked from face to face to face. ‘I don’t exactly have a choice here, do I?’
Her father rose, walked over and patted her shoulder. ‘This could be the making of you,’ he said.
Jessie propped her bicycle against Etty’s gable wall, knocked on the brown front door and let herself in. At this time of year, the neat white bungalow was draped in wisteria, and the garden dazzled with flowers.
‘Come in, come in,’ called Etty, from the front room. ‘Isn’t that one powerful day? Oh, and put the kettle on before you sit down, will you? I’m parched.’
Jessie was convinced that this was how her grandmother had reached such a good age in such fine health: she was skilled at getting others to do her bidding.
The house was of its era. A brown three-piece suite dominated the front room, while the floor was covered with pink and blue carpet. In a china cabinet, Aynsley and Belleek jostled for space with souvenir knick-knacks from Bundoran and Lanzarote. There were numerous photos from family occasions, including one of Jessie on the day of her university graduation.
Her memories of that day were strong. Her wild happiness had been joined by concern that her parents might say something to embarrass her. This, in turn, had been joined by shame that she was capable of such thoughts.
Boherbreen was a place of small farms, marshy land and crooked trees. The fields adjacent to Etty’s house were farmed by Jessie’s uncle, Pat, better known as Rusty. He frequently complained about how hard it was to stay afloat. ‘The government will only be happy when all the farmers are in a museum,’ he claimed. Still, he’d been scratching a living for more than forty years and showed no sign of retiring.
It was only when the blue and white teacup was safely in her hand that Etty raised her granddaughter’s latest disgrace. ‘I gather things weren’t going too well for you above in Dublin.’
Jessie placed her cup on the coffee-table. ‘The Clooneven bush telegraph has been busy.’
Etty laughed. She had a gorgeous laugh, a healthy chuckle that didn’t match her narrow frame and delicate features. She was an active, and competitive, grandparent. She liked to know what everybody was doing, and she enjoyed collating and passing on the news. She also had a habit of speaking her mind. This, it seemed to Jessie, was the joy of being either very old or very young: you could say what you wanted without fear of the consequences. Lorna claimed their grandmother talked so much because she knew her time was running out.
‘I’m glad you’ll be in Clooneven for the summer. Your mother loves having you around. You were always the favourite in that house . . . which probably accounts for why you are the way you are.’
‘What way am I?’
‘Spoilt.’
Et tu, Etty. ‘You’re terrible for handing out insults. I won’t come and visit unless you start being kinder to me.’
‘I’d a husband and three children when I was your age.’
‘You lived in Clooneven. There wasn’t anything else to do.’
Etty laughed again, displaying her old-style dentures, which were a shade too long. ‘You want to be young for ever, that’s your trouble. I mean, look at the cut of you.’
‘What’s wrong with shorts?’ Jessie looked down at her denim cutoffs, which she was wearing with a lilac vest. Her long legs were her best feature, and if she could wear shorts every day of the year, she would.
‘Not a thing if they were shorts for a grown woman, but those are like the ones the teenage girls in the community school wear.’
‘I’ll bear your views in mind the next time I go shopping.’
Etty shifted her gaze towards her granddaughter’s graduation picture. ‘Don’t pay any heed to me, I’m only jealous. I wouldn’t mind being twenty-nine again. There’s no decade to compare to your twenties . . . not that they’re always easy, mind. Back in my day, we were told to keep our heads down and ask for nothing. Your generation was told to ask for everything. And I’m not sure which was more dishonest. Or unkind.’
Jessie would have liked to argue, but much of what her grandmother said was true. At college, they’d been encouraged to see themselves as special. It was a designation they’d willingly accepted – and they’d expected it to continue. Why shouldn’t older people respect their talents and imagination, their new way of looking at the world?
Now, she saw how naïve they’d been. In the main, her college friends had been met by a great rush of indifference, their perceived privilege mocked and used against them. Six years after graduation, she was still adjusting to the fact that no one wanted to see her and her contemporaries as unusual or revolutionary.
If the stereotyping of her generation irritated her, Jessie was honest enough to admit that she was guilty of doing the same to older people. Having Etty in her life was a reminder that, while seductive, judging people by the number of candles on their birthday cake was often a mistake.
‘So,’ she said to her grandmother, ‘what I’m here for, the pleasure of your company aside, is to see if you know anything about what happened around these parts during the Famine.’
She ran through what Ger had told her about Johanna and Bridget.
When she’d finished, Etty took a while to respond. ‘Isn’t that very sad?’ she said. ‘Those were brutal times. Johanna can’t have lived far from here. A man named Henry Frobisher was the landlord. People still spoke about him when I was a child in the 1940s.’
‘Do I take it he wasn’t much good?’
‘By all accounts, he was one of the worst. Not that he spent much time in Ireland. He had his henchmen do the work for him.’
She stopped to drink some of her tea. Jessie looked at her thin hands with their dark blue veins, and, fleetingly, thought about all her grandmother had lived through. Her husband, Flan, had died twenty years earlier. One of her children had also died young.
‘I don’t know if this will be of very much help to the young people,’ said Etty, ‘but I do remember how my grandfather would get agitated when the Famine was mentioned. He wasn’t old enough to remember it, but his mother was. Some people . . . well, it was as if they were ashamed to have survived when so many others had perished.’
‘Like survivor’s guilt?’
‘Exactly. I always think that if these fields could talk, they’d have quite a story to tell. And it wasn’t that long ago, you know. Not in the grand scheme of things.’
‘What was your grandfather’s name?’ asked Jessie.
‘Seánie Nugent. I was a Nugent before I married. He hated seeing food wasted – that’s the other thing I recall. One of my brothers, Colm, the Lord have mercy on him, was a fierce picky eater, and Granddad would give out if he didn’t clear his plate. He used to say it was sinful to leave good food behind.’
‘Really?’
‘Oh, yes. I can still remember how he used to react.’
‘When was he born?’
‘Now you’re asking.’ Etty stopped to think. ‘Back in the 1870s, I’d say.’
‘So it’s possible he knew Bridget or her daughter?’
Again, her grandmother’s answer came slowly, and Jessie wondered if she was all right. Perhaps age was finally getting the better of her.
‘It is,’ she said at last.
‘I’d say Ger’s class would love to hear all this.’
‘I’d be happy to call down to them, if he’d like.’
‘That’d be great. I’ll let him know.’
Etty smiled and folded one hand neatly over the other. ‘Wouldn’t it be wonderful to discover what happened to Bridget and her daughter?’
‘It would,’ said Jessie, surprised to realise that she meant it.