Seeing Yourself

I KNOW HER as soon as I walk into the room, this girl who might claim my angel, this girl who might, on a whim, turn into me. She is sitting quietly and smiling. Her eyes are bright and her legs are crossed. She looks like someone I know, but that doesn’t worry me. We choose them for it. We say ‘I have a Julia Roberts type, except for the mouth’. She looks like the girl-next-door because she is supposed to look like the girl-next-door. She looks like everyone else we’ve ever had on the show, but this time, it doesn’t calm me down.

They go through their camera tests while I work on a new game for the biggest, the best, the last show of all, looking up now and then so they will think I am paying attention. People do not watch the television, they fight, feed the baby, read the paper, until something catches their eye.

She catches my eye all right. Warm voice—lower middle—receptionist—basketball—nightclubbing—anecdote—left job to travel—funny anecdote—wants to work with relief agency. Damien: ‘What kind of relief are you talking about?’ Doesn’t walk out. Laughs ‘naughty boy’ laugh with a bit of ‘would you ever cop on to yourself’ on the side. Perfect. Eyes a bit too glittery.

I go over to her and introduce myself. She thinks that she hasn’t got the gig because Damien is on the other side of the room. I tell her that I am in charge. She smiles and adjusts, taking comfort in the state of my clothes.

‘A bit nerve wracking,’ I say and she glances down at her legs, at the line where they are bisected by her skirt. There is something a little too orange about her tights, or too orange, perhaps, about her legs. A dodgy fake tan slapped on in a panic, because the camera never lies.

‘You could say,’ she says.

‘You did well.’

‘Great.’

‘Now tell me, what do you like about the show?’

So she did, and it all seemed very reasonable, if this weren’t the woman who was going to steal my angel away from me. So I ask the question that we never ask, though we do give them all a little speech about good fun and goodwill. I say ‘You don’t have a boyfriend, do you?’ and she says ‘No’ in a way that tells me she is lying, though it takes more than one lie to describe most of the relationships I know. Whatever the story, one lie is enough for me.

‘Well Edel,’ I say, ‘you’ve got the gig’, and she is thrilled.

I stay to fix a wardrobe call. ‘Bring in some clothes and we’ll have a look.’

‘You want me to wear my own clothes?’ she says and there is more than the usual panic in her voice, more than the usual coy ‘Oh I couldn’t possibly’, that you leave outside the door if you want to be on TV.

She looks up at me and I do not know what she sees. Nothing is my own anymore. She might see herself. She might see the pity I feel, for no reason at all. It is when I remember my own body, sad, sweet and blank, that I know what I wanted to say to her.

‘Have you …? You haven’t been on the show before?’

‘Sorry?’ she says.

‘I’m sure I’ve seen you on the show before.’

‘In the audience?’

‘No.’ It was a bare moment.

‘On the show?’ she says.

‘Yes.’

‘Not me.’

‘Oh good. You’re not called Marie Keogh, are you?’ I was not being polite. But although I had gone too far I never expected her to say:

‘Is that her name?’

So I wasn’t the only one. She herself was sitting watching the telly one night when she saw someone who looked just like her in the audience of The Late Late Show.

‘It must be somebody else so.’

But that was only the start of it. She also saw herself answering a question about European union in a vox pop in Henry Street.

‘Maybe it’s someone who looks just like you.’

‘Yes.’

‘Or what …?’

‘She is wearing my clothes.’

‘She is wearing your clothes,’ I say.

‘But different.’

‘Different.’

‘Different combinations.’

‘Right.’

‘It’s not me,’ she says. ‘Really. Ask my boyfriend. He saw me on Questions and Answers when I was away in Spain for two weeks. Talking about the Beef Tribunal. What do I know about the Beef Tribunal? I didn’t even have a tan.’

‘I thought you didn’t have a boyfriend?’

‘Well not any more,’ she says. ‘Obviously.’

Then she saw herself on the LoveQuiz. What really annoyed her was that this woman dressed better, even though they wore the same clothes. She accessorised.

‘I keep buying scarves,’ she says. ‘But I can never wear them right.’

So she cut her hair short and dyed it blonde and sat down to write to us personally. And here she was. She produces a driver’s licence. ‘Edel Lamb’ it says.

‘Fair enough,’ I say, because you cannot fold a flood, and put it in a drawer. Besides she doesn’t look pregnant—and my mother is always right about these things.