SHE’D GONE TO Paris first, working as a chambermaid in the Intercontinental Hotel, making beds and cleaning rooms and bathrooms. Elise and herself shared a small stuffy apartment provided for staff with three other girls from Holland.
‘Shit and sheets!’ they’d joked about work as they smoked Gitanes and Gauloises, drinking lemon Pernod till late at night in cheap scruffy bars and rising only a few hours later to go on duty in their pink and white uniforms. But the tips were good, and after only two months Romy and Arlene Vermeulen had packed up and hit the road, heading south for Provence. En route they’d picked grapes and lemons, their skin covered in insect bites and stings, their fingers and hands hard and calloused. They’d trekked the coast looking for jobs – Saint-Tropez, Nice, Cannes, Antibes, the surly French waiters in their pristine white shirts driving them off, the bar owners sneering at their French accents and Romy giving them the fingers and cursing them in perfect French.
Reluctantly they’d gone back to bed-making and washing toilets in a huge white hotel overlooking the beach where the French ladies lay bare breasted in the sun.
Their own skin turned to copper and they lived on salami and fish and salad, their breath stinking of garlic and oil as they danced in basement discos and clubs with nice French boys who wanted to do bad things with them. As the season ended and the beach began to empty Romy resisted the urge to pack her bags and return home and crossed to Morocco, learning from a girl called Leilah how to make filigree silver bracelets and anklets and how to string wire through beads and shape them into pretty necklaces and belts which they sold in the crowded market in Marrakesh.
‘Always price it too high, at least 100–150 dirhams more than you expect. The buyers want to haggle, the tour guides tell them to. They expect to wear you down and to get a bargain. It’s part of coming to the market.’
Her hair grew long so she braided it and wore leather sandals and loose tie-dye caftans. At night she slept in a low white house, open to the sky, wrapped in the arms of a tall American boy called Josh who hailed from Cincinnati. When he returned to America, another boy, David, took his place. Getting bored with skinny yellow dogs that panted in the sun and pot-bellied men who tried to press against her on the streets while calling her ‘bitch’, and friends who smoked too much hash and cared about nothing too much, she said goodbye to Leilah, packed up her wire-cutters and pliers and lino cutter and bags of blue-tinted beads, and headed for Spain.
Habit brought her to the hippie market in the old town of Ibiza, where the Germans and Danes admired her handiwork, paying with pesetas and Deutschmarks for their trinkets. Over a summer she amassed enough to open a bank account and put money by for when times were tight.
One evening she was sitting on a stool, concentrating on the wave-shaped earring she was making for a Viking from Copenhagen, when she heard a familiar voice.
‘Romy? It is you, isn’t it?’
Startled, she looked up, recognizing the strong Irish accent. It was her sister’s friend, Minnie Doyle.
‘Romy, how are you?’
‘I’m fine.’ She smiled, laying down her work, her mind racing.
‘Did you make all this jewellery?’
‘Well, most of it.’
Minnie fingered a fine necklace with glass and turquoise on silver. ‘God it’s gorgeous! It’s so unusual!’
Romy smiled. Most of the bracelets and necklaces she made were very similar, things the tourists liked, but there were always pieces that stimulated her and gave a creative edge to her work.
‘You look so different, your hair’s so long and you’ve gone so fair I’d have hardly recognized you.’
Romy thought Kate’s friend hadn’t changed a bit. Her dark hair and dark eyes twinkled like they always did.
‘How’s Kate?’ she asked, nervous. ‘Is she with you?’
‘God no! You know Kate, I couldn’t get her to take a break. She’s the same as ever, working too bloody hard. No, I’m with two other friends, we just came out for the week to have a bit of fun in the sun, as they say.’
‘Will you tell Kate I said hello when you get back?’
‘Hold on, Romy, why don’t you come and meet myself and the girls for a drink later?’
‘I’m not sure . . .’
‘No pressure, just a drink,’ coaxed Minnie.
Curious, she agreed to meet them at the Flamingo Bar, down near the harbour, later that night. Sitting in huge cane chairs, Minnie filled in Romy with all the news from home.
‘Do you keep in touch at all?’ she asked.
‘I send them cards and a letter to my mother on her birthday, otherwise not really.’
‘They miss you,’ said Minnie softly, her eyes serious, ‘especially Maeve.’
She could imagine her mother kneeling in the church praying, doing novenas for her, while her father sat up at the bar in McHugh’s priding himself on getting the family out of an embarrassing situation, believing the thousand pounds he’d sent her money well spent. She hated him for it! For his hypocrisy, for letting her down when she needed him most!
‘I know Kate and Moya miss you. Did you hear that Moya and Patrick have a baby girl, Fiona?’
‘So I’m an auntie now!’ laughed Romy, suddenly jealous of her older sister and her nice safe life. A baby! Moya was bound to be the perfect mother.
‘Romy, why don’t you come home for a holiday?’ coaxed Minnie over a Bacardi and Coke. ‘See them for a few days. Your folks are getting older.’
‘I know, it’s just that right now is not a good time for me,’ she apologized. ‘You wouldn’t understand, Minnie, but I just can’t.’
‘OK, OK, I’ll keep my big fat mouth shut and my nose out of it.’ Minnie grinned, squeezing her hand.
She had a laugh with them as they filled her in on the Dublin scene, which seemed a million miles from the balmy heat and tranquillity of sitting under a starry Ibizan sky with a glass of ice cold rum and fresh lemon juice in your hand.
By the weekend Romy had packed up what was left of her stock and a few possessions, selling the remaining lease on her stall to an English potter and his wife Carrie as she headed for the mainland. She wasn’t taking the risk of having her mother or Kate coming out to find her. It was time to move on.